February 11, 2004

i4cast Announces Enhanced Vendor Viability/Supplier Performance Management Capability With Release of Version 5.5                       

Companies Realize Benefits By Developing Lasting Relationships With Suppliers

Houston, Texas, February 11, 2004 – i4cast™, the leader in Total Cost Management software, today announced enhanced vendor viability and supplier performance management capabilities that are available with the release of version 5.5. 

The enhanced functionality in the i4cast suite of collaborative costing solutions provides detailed information and status on supplier quotes, shows variances between supplier contracts and supplier invoices and provides a consolidated environment for tracking all assembly and component contracts and vendors.  

Features and benefits include:

• Competitive pricing is ensured by providing an integrated view into all historical, active and future commodity contracts across suppliers.

• Bill of Materials (BOM) collaboration ensures that suppliers are both building deliverables to specification as well as leveraging enterprise costs negotiated with third party component vendors.

• Tracking supplier market share, based on sales volume, supports analysis of top suppliers versus best cost providers, highlighting opportunities to develop strategic relationships with current suppliers.

• Collaborative BOM and Cost Modeling combined with Quoting supports intelligent product planning, vendor selection and pricing.

 The new features allow for cost savings and optimized supplier relationships.  Identifying opportunities where invoices have been overpaid allows the organization to recoup supplier payments.  Complete visibility of historical and forecast information supports comprehensive supplier performance analysis, optimizing supply costs through the identification of performing and under-performing suppliers.  Decision support is provided for strategic sourcing and supplier development.

 “Companies can realize both short- and long-term benefits in service, quality, operational efficiency, planning and innovation by developing lasting relationships, based on shared goals and objectives, with the worldwide suppliers that can best support their strategic direction,” said Dan Hickman, Manager of Product Development at i4cast.

About i4cast

i4cast™ is a leading Total Cost Management solution focused on delivering right-time, accurate cost for the enterprise-wide financial supply chain.  i4cast™ has developed an Internet-based Total Cost Management solution encompassing global cost & profitability modeling, contract & commodity cost management and supplier performance, development and collaboration.  i4cast™ decision support tools allow clients to have the very best costing information to build and manage greater product profitability, reduce cost of goods sold, enhance costing collaboration and improve time to market capabilities.