Saqqara Shifts Business ModelSaqqara Shifts Business Model

As more companies look for a total package that includes software and services, Saqqara Systems Inc. is shifting its business model toward becoming a spend-management-software company and away from a 9-year-old focus on product content and data management for E-catalogs.

The company on Monday released Saqqara Commerce Data Management for E-Procurement, a managed service designed to help global businesses achieve spend-management objectives by providing and maintaining high-quality commerce data from their suppliers. The tool, a paperless requisition system, replaces Saqqara's Catalog Management Solution and signifies an expanded strategic direction for the company.

"Our customers have driven this change," says Keith Scott, senior VP of sales and marketing. "They're looking for a complete service of tools and support. As part of the service, we host the information on behalf of the customer and manage the IT issues of keeping the data current on the master catalog, such as price or product description changes."

Saqqara also maintains backup files and makes sure there's enough bandwidth to handle each transaction. But the price for the system and service isn't cheap. The cost is upward of $200,000 to get a company up and running in about 90 days, procuring products from about 15 suppliers. The average price to bring on a new supplier and list its products is approximately $2,500, dropping to $1,200 if the supplier has worked with Saqqara in the past.

Alcoa Inc., a fabricated-aluminum manufacturer and maker of Reynolds foil and plastic wraps, is further automating E-procurement processes and said Monday that it's using Saqqara's Commerce Data Management tool. Saqqara's managed services let Alcoa intelligently unify and manage its requirements for supplier engagement, content acquisition, content transformation, and publication. According to the company, prior to choosing Saqqara Alcoa relied on an in-house software tool with frequently outdated information maintained by consultants.

"When we measure success, we look at how much we're delivering in bottom-line savings," said Tammy Hardy, Alcoa's manager of global supply solutions. "Each month we drive more than 13,000 high-volume, low-value purchase-order transactions through our optimized E-procurement process at considerable cost savings. Our goal now is to continue to ramp up transaction volume while improving the customer and supplier experience."

Saqqara said it has invested $30 million in the automated system, and holds multiple patents validated by customers such as Alcoa, America West Airlines, and Honeywell. The company's managed services are driven by its Commerce Master engine, which integrates and manages disparate data. Commerce Data Management is a Web-based managed service for catalog management. With its managed service, Saqqara creates, hosts, and manages a private aggregated catalog for each customer.