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News In Review

June 23, 1999

TI Purchases To Go Online

Intelisys will aid in automated buying

By Clinton Wilder

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    • Texas Instruments Inc. is the latest large company to move nonproduction procurement to the Internet. The $8.4 billion high-tech manufacturer revealed this week it will use IEC-Enterprise, a procurement application from Intelisys Electronic Commerce LLC, to automate the purchasing of $300 million worth of goods annually.

    Intelisys has agreed to have the system ready by Aug. 1 for TI employees in Boston and at the company's Dallas headquarters to buy online from about 25 suppliers. The suppliers, who will host their own online catalogs, include Boise Cascade, CompUSA, Fisher Scientific, Newark Electronics, and Software Spectrum.

    TI needs to deploy the procurement system before moving on to its next big application implementation in August: the sales and distribution modules of SAP's R/3 enterprise resource planning software. "We have a small window of opportunity here, so we have to move quickly," says Pallab Chatterjee, TI senior VP and CIO.

    TI will integrate IEC-Enterprise with its SAP finance and procurement applications. Intelisys will be able to deploy the system quickly because TI has a single version of SAP across the company. "That makes execution a walk in the park for us," says Intelisys CEO Lloyd O'Connor.

    TI expects to save about $20 million annually on process costs by moving procurement online. The move also gives the company the opportunity to standardize its procurement methods. "We do some electronic procurement with a legacy application now, but we have three or four different methods of buying," Chatterjee says. "This will give us one method with the lowest transaction costs."

    Next year, TI plans to expand the deployment of IEC-Enterprise to enable online procurement in its overseas locations, including Singapore and Malaysia.


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