PeopleSoft Corp has invested $8m in supply chain vendor Commerce One to use its technology as the infrastructure for its new business-to-business e-commerce web site. As part of the deal, the ERP vendor has also made an eight figure royalty payment to Commerce One, although executives wouldn’t specify the actual amount. The new PeopleSoft Procurement Community, announced on Monday as part of the PeopleSoft Business Network (PSBN), is based on Commerce One’s Commerce Chain product which includes its BuySite 5.0 procurement software, to allow businesses to buy and sell over the internet and MarketSite.net, an online forum for business products and services suppliers such as Office Depot, Unisource, BOC Gasses, American Hospital (for medical supplies) and Nokia. It’s built on XML and uses Microsoft’s BizTalk e- commerce standard.
The first iteration of the ERP vendor’s Procurement Community will include virtually unaltered versions of the Commerce One applications, but the companies will work together to integrate the products and give them the same look and feel as the other PSBN portals and applications, according to Tom Glassanos, executive VP of PeopleSoft’s e-business solutions group. The combined effort will be marketed and sold by both companies, and revenues – from software license sales and ongoing downstream transactions – will be split between the two companies, he said. Chuck Donchess, Commerce One’s VP of marketing and business development, said that the two companies might add other types of transactions, such as on-line bidding or on-line proposals at some stage in the future.
Pricing for the service varies. Users (on-line buyers) only have to pay a one-off license fee for the BuySite software, plus an annual fee for access to the MarketSite.net service. Suppliers pay per transaction, Donchess said. PeopleSoft’s Procurement Community is one of a number of web-based communities the ERP vendor is launching under its PSBN program, announced last November, designed to enable specific individuals to carry out tasks on-line. Other communities already announced include benefits, expenses and travel and planning.
PeopleSoft also announced a customized application for the insurance industry, PeopleSoft Insurance Administration, which it claims will enable companies to reduce development and delivery time of insurance products by approximately 75%. Targeted at insurance and banking organizations that sell and administer life and annuity insurance products, PeopleSoft said the product consists of three applications: Policy Administration for Life Products, Policy Administration for Annuity Products and Agency Administration For Life and Annuity Products. It also integrates customer information with the enterprise, enabling better customer relationship management by offering a financial system which focuses on the user as opposed to the policy, PeopleSoft said.
