E-procurement will Debut on NS SafeNet

When used by shipping companies, e-procurement can significantly reduce costs associated with the purchasing process," said Evan Michaelides, NS Vice President of Product Development. NS SafeNet's eProcurement, a new feature that will soon debut as part of the NS Purchasing & Inventory module, provides owners and operators with an automated system for communicating its needs to vendors.

NS's eProcurement uses email to reach its list of vendors, which gives operators a high level of control over who receives information. The industry has seen several recent start-ups offering e-commerce solutions that can do everything from bid out RFQs to analyze and present the results.

NS SafeNet’s eProcurement works by sending out emails of the RFQ to the approved vendor list, receiving the responses back via email and automatically inputting the data into the NS Purchasing & Inventory module. The system then analyzes the data and presents purchasing managers with the best options based on their criteria. This means a manager needs only to open up an NS SafeNet spreadsheet to review and make a decision.

NS SafeNet’s eProcurement will further increase functionality over the next six months, adding purchase orders (PO’s), service purchase orders (SPOs) and vendor invoices to the system. Vendor invoices, similar to RFQs and SPOs, would come in via email with the amount owed automatically transferred into NS SafeNet where a comparison can be made with the purchase order before approving the invoice for payment.NS SafeNet eProcurement is for use with the NS SafeNet Purchasing & Inventory module and will be available this Fall 2000.