Siemens Building Exchange
German electronics and engineering giant Siemens is launching a billion-euro (US$868 million), three-year program to transform itself into an electronically driven company, using an intranet to put everything from financial management to manufacturing to marketing online. The company's 447,000 employees in more than 190 countries will have Internet access by October.
Also on tap are supply chain management, online procurement and electronic sales systems, says Siemens spokesman Constantin Birnstiel.
The company has contracted with i2 Technologies, Commerce One and IBM to build its business infrastructure. Siemens expects to process half of its procurement volume electronically in the next three years. The new platform, Click2procure, will be semi-open, meaning that suppliers, but not competitors, will be invited to join each other and Siemens for volume discounts.
Jaap Favier, senior analyst at Forrester Research in Amsterdam, says supply chain automation can yield up to a 10 percent cost reduction for a company. That could save Siemens as much as $6.5 billion based on last year's net sales of 78 billion euros (US$65 billion). Birnstiel projects a modest 3 percent to 5 percent savings during the project's life cycle. Siemens CEO Heinrich von Pierer says the company had online sales of about 5 billion euros from e-commerce in 1999, and he expects "that will grow quickly."
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