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Procurement Challenges Resulting from Global Sourcing and Business Expansion Addressed in First i2 Next-Generation Supply Chain Management Solution

Companies faced with procurement challenges brought on by global sourcing and business expansion can now turn to i2 Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:ITWO), for next-generation supply chain solutions designed to address these critical business issues. Key to solving these issues is i2 Consolidated Procurement, a solution designed to help companies better manage supplier interactions across regions, divisions and outsourced businesses.

"We are pleased that these consolidated procurement tools are now available as a part of our next-generation supply chain offering. Because i2 Consolidated Procurement leverages the power of the i2 Agile Business Process Platform, companies can implement and enhance business processes in a non-intrusive and phased manner without expensive rip-and-replace strategies," said i2 Chief Executive Officer Michael McGrath. "What is even more exciting is that a number of customers are already using this next-generation solution in production and have seen improvements in deployment time, flexibility, and total cost of ownership, as well as a return on their investment."

The Business Challenge

In an expanded global economy, sourcing and procurement challenges have become more complex. Multiple divisions in different countries with disparate systems can lead to inefficient procurement processes. Add global outsourcing, business growth through acquisition, supplier variability, manual data entry and consolidation, and multiple part numbers for the same items, and those challenges multiply quickly.

i2 Consolidated Procurement is designed to help companies meet those challenges by:

-- Centralizing purchasing and collaboration across all divisions, suppliers, and outsourced manufacturers across all geographies and item types

-- Establishing a single system of reference that can link to multiple back-end systems, allowing local processing

-- Enabling easier rescheduling, substituting or transferring of inventory from other locations to meet exception conditions

-- Obtaining global visibility and tracking of all purchasing, including project-based purchasing

Early adopters of i2 Consolidated Procurement have reported reduced purchasing costs through supplier rationalization and unique part consolidation. They also report better leverage prices through volume and spend analysis, reduced expedited freight and an increased use of preferred parts and suppliers for improved compliance with government regulations. They have also reduced inventory and material shortages, lowered safety stocks and re-used existing inventory in other locations.

i2 customer saves time, reduces inventory using consolidated procurement solution

One i2 customer, an original design and manufacturing (ODM) and original equipment manufacturing (OEM) company, was challenged by disparate part numbering schemes, time-intensive PR/PO processing, and sub-optimal spend data gathering and organization. Collaboration was manual and changes to POs and the impact of those changes was difficult to track. The company, which does business in China, Singapore, Malaysia and the United States, did not want to replace systems already in place and working properly. Instead, the company wanted to enhance the work that was already being done. Each of its three plants had its own MRP system, so it needed tools that could sit on top of these disparate systems and present a single face to suppliers.

With the help of i2, the company was able to establish a single procurement and supplier collaboration platform that manages the purchase order transactions of all three plants. This allowed for consolidated purchasing power, PR/PO approval based on price variances, and PO acceptance disaggregated to the respective MRP instances of the three plants. The system also now provides this i2 customer with visibility into excess inventory, as well as receipt visibility for buyers. Additionally, the ODM/OEM was able to utilize the flexibility of the i2 Agile Business Process Platform to build custom business rules to automate its supplier allocation process, which otherwise was very time-consuming and error-prone.

i2 Next-Generation Solutions and the i2 Agile Business Process Platform

Today's announcement is the first in a planned series featuring i2 Next-Generation Supply Chain Management (SCM) solutions and the business challenges they address. i2 Next-Generation SCM solutions are built on the i2 Agile Business Process Platform, a unique service-oriented architecture (SOA) that includes a layer of technology services and a business process workflow engine. The platform is business process management (BPM) compliant and interoperates with legacy, ERP and other enterprise architectures.

i2 Next-Generation SCM solutions feature a series of workflows based on i2's industry and supply chain expertise combined with easy-to-use visual programming capabilities designed to enable companies to automate solutions. Using i2 Studio, these workflows can be modified. As business processes change, capabilities can be expanded, and changes can be delivered to users through a common integrated user interface.

i2 Consolidated Procurement is one of three next-generation solutions that make up the i2 Collaborative Supply Execution (CSE) suite. i2 CSE is tailored for companies with multi-divisional organizations where lines of business have a high degree of autonomy, as well as organizations with multi-tier supply networks with decentralized procurement processes. Designed to be sold as single solutions or deployed sequentially, these strategic offerings are designed to solve specific business problems. i2 CSE can allow companies in a variety of industries to better leverage the power of the i2 Agile Business Process Platform to synchronize their procurement, materials management, and supplier interactions and processes with changing demand across organizations and systems.

To learn more about i2 Next-Generation SCM solutions, and i2 CSE in particular, please go to www.i2.com.