Memphis City Schools will use Zycus to Automate Spend Analysis and e-Sourcing

PRINCETON, N.J. October 5, 2011 – Zycus, a world leader in Procurement Technology Solutions, announced today that the Procurement Services Division for Memphis City Schools (Tennessee) will adopt its Spend Analysis and e-Sourcing Solutions.

The Memphis City Schools Procurement Services Division purchases all goods and services for over 108,000 students attending some 185 elementary, middle and high schools plus various offices, and outlying sites in the Memphis, Tennessee area. With education funding facing years of belt tightening from all levels of government, Memphis’ executive leadership has tasked the Procurement Services Division with delivering substantial cost savings.

According to Sybille Noble, Chief Contracting Officer for Memphis City Schools, the Zycus procurement performance solutions will accelerate delivery of those cost savings in several ways. “We won’t waste valuable time and strategic procurement resources manually crunching numbers to generate detailed views of our spending and supply-base scenarios. Nor will we waste time digging around aimlessly in our data for sourcing and cost savings opportunities. Depending on the strategies that we specify, the Zycus Spend Analysis solution will assist us in finding those opportunities.” Noble also found Zycus’ e-Sourcing to be flexible enough to accommodate all the various rules and policies for competitive bidding to which the Memphis City Schools Procurement Services Division must comply. “Using the Zycus e-Sourcing Solution, we will be able to source more spend categories; invite more suppliers to participate; and analyze bid results and award scenarios rapidly and efficiently. It especially offers us a way to view RFP responses using an apples-to-apples comparison” Noble says.

“Our due diligence process,” adds Noble, “included both a competitive proof of concept and an RFP in which four solution providers competed. Zycus won hands down on the POC and also offered the most competitive value.” As Procurement Services moves forward, she notes, it will also be looking at Zycus’ Contract Management and Supplier Management automation solutions. “With towns and municipalities all over the U.S. facing tight fiscal constraints for many years to come,” says Anurag Dixit, Vice President of Marketing for Zycus, “we think this is an important story that others should follow closely. Local, municipal, state and federal government procurement groups will not be in a position to expand staff levels, so working smarter and faster will be the only ways to deliver substantial cost savings and other forms of performance improvement through procurement.”