SoftQuad Software Ltd. announced the release of MarketAgility Express, a desktop application designed to allow small and mid-sized suppliers to quickly create their own customized product catalogs for Global 2000 e-procurement systems and electronic markets. Without sufficient content and supplier participation, buyers in Global 2000 companies are forced to resort to more expensive off-line purchasing. For e-marketplaces, the lack of supplier product selection makes it difficult to attract buyers, resulting in lower transaction volume, which threatens the viability of the marketplace. Outsourced catalog services are often slow and cumbersome, creating a bottleneck in the flow of timely and accurate product information to the e-marketplace. MarketAgility Express solves these challenges by allowing suppliers to quickly create and update their own catalogs, and deliver them to e-procurement systems in the right format. Based on XMetaL, MarketAgility Express is an affordable Windows-based desktop application designed for suppliers with limited technical resources. MarketAgility Express: requires no setup or configuration, creates e-catalogs from scratch or by importing Microsoft Access or Excel files, supports the creation of buyer-specific catalogs with special pricing, simplifies the categorizing of products into UN/SPSC classifications, automatically transforms catalogs into e-market format, and enables non-technical staff to manage and update catalogs MarketAgility Express is available now for the Ariba platform, supporting both CIF and cXML formats. Support for additional formats will follow. MarketAgility Express is available to e-marketplaces, suppliers and channel partners at a suggested retail price of $995 per seat. Volume discounts and partner programs are available. www.softquad.com
Day: February 4, 2001
Liquent, a division of ESPS, Inc. announced that it has signed an agreement with eonDigital. Under the terms of the agreement, eonDigital will use Liquent’s core rendering technology within its end-to-end solution, which brings together content management, publishing, and printing technologies. Liquent’s technology will provide eonDigital users with rendering and publishing capabilities that enable companies to take text and visual components and automatically assemble them into customized documents and communications. Liquent technology builds upon the rendering technology developed by ESPS over the past six years, adding the ability to aggregate information components from virtually any file format and repository and render them to an open, standards-based format. As a result, the information can be reused for multiple needs and audiences. The technology also assembles and formats the information, and publishes the final product as electronic or paper output. www.eondigital.com, www.esps.com
