Zycus Introduces New Strategic Sourcing Enhancements

Zycus Inc. (http://www.zycus.com), a global leader in Spend
Management software solutions, today announced a significant expansion
of its Spend Management Suite, adding new Strategic Sourcing modules
with the introduction of version 5.0. Moving beyond eAuctions, the new
solution addresses the entire strategic sourcing process of analysis,
planning, supplier evaluation and negotiations.

Even as companies have attempted to automate their entire Spend
Management process, end-to-end enablement and consistent adoption has
remained elusive. As a result, many procurement organizations have
used sourcing tools sporadically with an emphasis only on eAuctions.
This has led to lower user adoption, not to mention strategy
development and planning occurring outside of the core solution suite,
limiting knowledge captured throughout the entire process and
introducing significant inefficiencies.

Zycus´ new solution empowers rapid user adoption resulting in
sustained savings through extremely easy to use software that
automates the entire strategic sourcing process. Designed to address
the shortcomings of previous approaches, Zycus´ new solution provides
integrated strategy development, sourcing planning, supplier
evaluation and negotiations.

Says Aatish Dedhia, CEO, Zycus Inc., "Zycus has always led the
market with innovation. When we did market surveys, we were surprised
to find that although eSourcing was used by a large number of
organizations, the adoption and usage within these companies was low.
So, after successfully innovating with using Artificial Intelligence
for Spend Analysis, Zycus is now focusing its innovation energies on
making software extremely ´Easy to Use´ so that eSourcing gets the
universal adoption it rightly deserves."

Historically, sourcing solutions have focused primarily on
e-Auctions. As a result, sporadic adoption and a lack of user-driven
innovation were noticed. One of the challenges faced was that in many
solutions, it was difficult to create and evaluate RFx´s within the
existing tool. Zycus has put significant effort to ensure that
powerful functionality - such as creating and evaluating large
multi-section RFx´s - is offered through an intuitive and interactive
Web 2.0 interface that increases adoption and prevents the RFx modules
from becoming shelf-ware.

"In the current business environment, successful strategic
sourcing requires a blend of category, process, supply base and
technology expertise," notes Andrew Bartolini, Vice President of
global supply management research at Aberdeen Group. "Zycus´ latest
offering provides a platform for sourcing teams to bring these pieces
together and achieve sustainable results."

The Zycus Strategic Sourcing application consists of two modules:

Zycus iSource - Zycus iSource is an eSourcing module that provides
comprehensive RFX processing, objective supplier bid evaluation and
multiple negotiation techniques. Zycus has leveraged Web 2.0
technologies including Drag-and-Drop for RFX creation, Interactive
graphical analysis, and collaborative workflow to provide end users
the simplicity, speed and power that encourage adoption.

"In order to be more broadly adopted, sourcing tools need easier
to use functionality for constructing requests, evaluating bids, and
archiving the results of events in a searchable fashion," said Deborah
Wilson, Research Director at Gartner Inc. "The inclusion of strategic
sourcing plan development within a sourcing application has the
potential to enable purchasing organizations to more cleanly execute
to plan," she added.

Zycus iPlan - Zycus has expanded the definition of Sourcing
Solutions and is the first vendor to automate the process of sourcing
strategy and plan development. iPlan is fully configurable to leverage
existing knowledge assets, or knowledge from partners and consultants.
It serves as the perfect ally for a procurement transformation
project. Mickey North Rizza, Research Director for AMR Research says
"iPlan is the automation of the sourcing strategy including plan and
development and was developed by Zycus to put strategy back into
sourcing."

iPlan provides a seven step sourcing process for plan creation.
The product allows users to capture and analyze data to be used
through built-in tools like commodity profiling, demand aggregation,
supply market analysis and total cost modeling for effective sourcing
plan development. Mickey North Rizza adds, "Bringing all these areas
together can be a daunting task for many companies and once you add in
other knowledge based assets or the input from partners and
consultants a streamlined work flow becomes very complex. Zycus iPlan
provides a planning tool to leverage across these various sourcing
aspects and make a difference in strategic sourcing."

About Zycus

Zycus is the world´s leading provider of Spend Management
solutions to Global 1000 companies. Zycus´ solutions suite, consisting
of Strategic Sourcing and Actionable Spend Analysis tools, combine
cutting-edge technology and domain expertise to enable greater user
adoption and sustainable savings. Zycus´ solutions facilitate greater
process planning, visibility and control to increase corporate
alignment of Spend Management initiatives.

Innovation & Ease of use is at the core of every Zycus offering.
Zycus´ Spend Management solutions help procurement departments
Analyze, Plan and Source through an intuitive and objective driven
process. With proven Spend Management deployments across the globe and
over 100 implementations Zycus´ solutions have emerged as a global
favorite.

Zycus has over 250 employees spread across its offices in North
America, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information about Zycus and
its solutions please write to solutions@zycus.com or log onto
http://www.zycus.com