Companies seeking to stretch their E-procurement dollars a little further may want to make sure their E-sourcing applications boast strong analytical features. Those that do can help companies achieve additional procurement cost reductions of 5% to 15%, according to research firm the Aberdeen Group.

Staples Inc. hopes to reap the benefits of the optimization-based decision-support engine in Emptoris Inc.'s ePass software, which uses mathematical algorithms to evaluate in parallel a range of factors to help users select the supplier best-suited to provide a product or service. But while getting the best upfront price is important, it's only one factor when Staples selects vendors to provide printing services for its small business customers.

"Our vendors are really an extension of Staples," says Greg Papp, manager of business services for the office-products distributor. "If we're going to promise a certain delivery time to a customer on their business cards, we need to make sure the vendor is going to deliver the cards in that time frame. We also need to make sure that they're going to have the highest-quality standards."

Emptoris is hosting the browser-based application for Staples, which is testing the software. The tool produces a summary analysis of each vendor's bids, helping Staples decide how many vendors are needed to fill an order, which is offering the best deal, and what conditions should be added to agreements.

The Aberdeen Group says ePass is capable of evaluating thousands or even millions of purchase scenarios in seconds. Papp was unable to quantify the savings in money and time that Staples has achieved using ePass, but he says that, so far, the retailer is pleased with the results.

Emptoris, which released the latest version of ePass last month, has added more collaboration features to the software, letting buyers within a company work together on creating requests for quotes. When a request for quotes is started, all the buyers of the listed products are notified and given a chance to participate.

In dealing with suppliers, all documentation is stored and changes are tracked to ensure a buyer has access to up-to-date data. EPass lets suppliers accessing requests for quotes through the Web separate and bid on specific line items and message each other to organize a group bid.

The average price of an ePass software license is $500,000.