Iasta

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Iasta
Type Privately held company
Founded 2000
Headquarters Flag of the United States
Indianapolis, Indiana United States
Key people David Bush
Jason Treida
Industry Enterprise Software
Revenue Unknown
Website www.iasta.com

Contents

[edit] History

Iasta, which is headquartered in Carmel, Indiana, was founded in 2000 as a reverse auction services company. Iasta has evolved into a global supply management software company and provides applications and services to over 100 clients. Iasta was started during the peak of the dot com frenzy by four original founders who had determined that there was room for alternatives to expensive reverse auction solutions such as FreeMarkets and CommerceOne. At the time, Iasta chose a far different path than virtually all e-business software companies by boot-strapping the entire business. The standard method for start-up software companies in the early days was the usage of venture capital to fund rapid growth and expansion. Since Iasta chose a more methodical growth path, which solely used organic revenue for re-investment and expansion, it remained much less visible to the market until 2005 when major client acquisitions, analyst coverage and awards became more regular. Even today, Iasta spends less than $50,000 annually on all forms of marketing and maintains a very low profile in the supply/spend management industry.

Iasta is somewhat unique in the e-Sourcing software application space as it is one of only two companies that can claim an end-to-end eSourcing suite that was built to be an On-Demand Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product offering from the ground up, where eSourcing is defined as the full spend analysis, RFP, reverse auction/negotiation, award optimization, and contract cycle. The only other company that can make such a claim is Procuri. Although companies like Ariba and Emptoris also offer fairly complete eSourcing suites in an "On-Demand" model, they were designed and developed as traditional installed enterprise application suites, and their "On-Demand" offerings are really a hosted ASP model using single-tenant architecture.

[edit] Products

Iasta markets three major product platforms: SmartAnalytics (Spend Analysis); SmartSource (Sourcing); and SmartOptimization (Optimization).

[edit] SmartAnalytics

SmartAnalytics is a powerful OLAP engine that gives companies visibility into spend without reliance on their IT department or the software vendor. Key features of the spend analysis tool are:

  • Flexible dataset creation
  • Analysis and ad hoc reporting tools
  • Real-time dataset modification
  • OLAP engine that supports 100M+ transactions

[edit] SmartSource

SmartSource is their eSourcing platform that is used by thousands of purchasing professionals globally for the implementation and enforcement of supply management best practices. Key components of the SmartSource application suite include:

  • Dashboard views and Management Reporting
  • e-RFx and e-Auctions
  • Project Management
  • Document/Template/Email Libraries
  • Basic Sourcing Optimization
  • Contract Management

[edit] SmartOptimization

SmartOptimization is a bolt-on extension to the SmartSource platform that supports basic logistics and carrier optimization, allows users to build sophisticated constraints in their "What If?" sourcing scenarios, and supports custom modeling. Iasta's optimization technology is based on the CPlex optimization engine provided by iLog. Additional functionality beyond SmartSource optimization includes:

  • Additional constraints
  • Freight Bracket optimization
  • Higher support levels
  • Custom constraint models

[edit] Community

Iasta is a leader in knowledge sharing in the supply management space. In the past two years, Iasta has launched and maintained two large, vendor-neutral, information repositories for the advancement of supply management professionals.

[edit] E-Sourcing Forum

Iasta is the founding contributor of e-Sourcing Forum. Updated daily, the blog is one of the few blogs solely dedicated to serving the information needs of supply management professionals who specialize in strategic sourcing. The blog provides valuable insight on e-Sourcing best practices and technology, as well as commentary on current events and trends. The interactive blog dialog includes content from various experts in the Supply Management industry as well as individual users.

[edit] E-Sourcing Wiki

eSourcingWiki is an open content community of strategic sourcing and procurement best practices. Like Wikipedia, the wiki is a dynamic document that constantly adjusts and transforms to current trends and thought leadership in supply management. Global contributors are encouraged to contribute to the wiki on an on-going basis to help insure that the information is current and relevant to today's supply management professionals.

[edit] Awards

Iasta has been recognized numerous times for industry excellence and frequently mentioned in publications, analyst reports and blogs. Honors of note include:

[edit] e-Sourcing Related Info

[edit] References