Verticalnet, Inc. (VERT)
Interview with: Nathanael Lentz, President and CEO
Business News, Financial News, Stocks, Money & Investment Ideas, CEO Interview
and Information on their Strategic Sourcing and Supply
Management solutions that enable companies to identify, negotiate, realize, and sustain
savings and supply base performance improvement. |
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Verticalnet
navigates the tough technology market by focusing on delivering value to market-leading
customers, improving its award winning technology, and building financial stability and
flexibility
Technology
Computer Services
(VERT-NASD: SC)
Verticalnet, Inc.
Nathanael Lentz
President and
Chief Executive Officer
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse
Senior Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com
September 2003
CEO Analysis:
Verticalnet, Inc. (NSDQ: VERT) is a leading provider of Strategic Sourcing and Supply
Management solutions that enable companies to identify, negotiate, realize, and sustain
savings and supply base performance improvement. Supply Management is more than merely
reducing prices - requiring companies to balance price, performance, and risk to achieve
the lowest total cost of ownership. Led by its Spend Analysis solution that quickly
provides companies with insight into enterprise-wide spending, Verticalnet's full suite of
Supply Management solutions enables companies to achieve lower prices, improved contract
compliance, better supplier service, and shorter sourcing cycles. As a result, clients
recognize significant and sustainable savings in materials costs, inventory levels, and
administrative costs - resulting in improved profitability. “In
today’s environment, where growth is hard to achieve on the revenue line, people are
looking for ways to drive value in their business by finding ways to buy cheaper and
better.” Says Mr. Nathanael Lentz, President
& CEO of Verticalnet, Inc., “The first thing they need in
order to do that is visibility into what they are buying and from whom and to identify a
real opportunity for savings. Our application takes data from different systems, and
creates a common view of that data and provides and analytic framework and ability to dig
into the data and understand where the hidden savings are. Beyond our Spend Analysis
solution, we also offer software and services that help companies select suppliers, manage
procurement and contracts, and measure and monitor supplier performance. All of our
solutions are focused on helping our customers drive measurable, sustainable value out of
their supplier relationships.” Commenting on the industries that Verticalnet
focuses on Mr. Lentz tell us, “We
focus on industries where input products are more complex. Most discrete manufacturing and
consumer products companies are targets for us. We also are seeing relevance in the
healthcare space. Multiple locations and multiple system complexity is something we look
for. We go out and try to find companies with divisions that have been growing both
organically or through M & A activity, or a combination; that is an obvious target for
us.” When asked if the hardest part was getting in the door, Mr. Lentz replied, “In this environment,
it is very challenging. People are just beginning to think about spending from an IT
investment standpoint again. But we are finding that our solutions target real and
pressing problems for a majority of the large manufacturing companies out there. Our
Spend Diagnostic program helps get companies over the hump, and demonstrates the real,
immediate value that we can deliver. Ultimately, this lays the roadmap for companies to
make fast decisions.” Addressing investor, Mr. Lentz
points out that, “The Verticalnet of today is a company focused
on developing leading solutions in a high growth market. The strategic sourcing space is
the next area that corporations are looking for to drive value and enable them to become
more strategic in terms of how they manage their relationships with suppliers. This sector
is predicted to be the highest growth sector in software over the next three to four
years. We are extremely well positioned from a product and company standpoint with
market-leading customers that include IKEA, Lowe’s, Valvoline, and MasterBrand
Cabinets. We have a management team that has taken on the challenges that we faced
financially and from a business standpoint, and have achieved a tremendous amount in a
short time.”
Verticalnet’s solution facilitates the entire lifecycle of Supply Management,
including: Supply Strategy — Enables companies to understand and analyze current
spending and develop supply strategies for managing total cost through demand aggregation,
rationalization, supplier collaboration, and better negotiation. Supply Selection —
Enables companies to quickly and effectively identify, select, and negotiate with the best
strategic partners to achieve the best portfolio of suppliers to optimize price, risk, and
performance. Supply Execution — Ensures that the strategic partners selected and
terms negotiated are implemented and utilized across the global enterprise while
eliminating much of the manual and administrative effort from procurement . It also
enables the sharing of planning information with strategic partners to improve the supply
chain's efficiency. Supply Performance — Measures, analyzes and improves the
performance of, and relationship with, strategic partners and suppliers ensuring
continuous improvement and a "closed loop" Supply Management process.
Many point solutions exist to provide components of Supply Management including Reverse
Auction, RFX, Contract Management and eProcurement. Verticalnet provides the only solution
which facilitates the full lifecycle of Supply Management ensuring continuous improvement
within all categories of spend and across the entire global organization. Utilization of
Verticalnet's solution provides world class Supply Management capabilities helping
companies achieve operational excellence and ensuring the maximum benefits from
world-class Supply Management processes.
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