Agile Revamps Product Sourcing, Collabration Applications

These two applications account for two-thirds of the new Agile8 platform. Slated to ship this month is the third component, Agile Product Service and Improvement, which, like the other two applications, is aimed at companies in the automotive, high-tech and manufacturing industries.

Executives at Agile, based here, said that companies pour the lion's share of their sales back into product sourcing.

"Sixty [percent to 70 percent of a company's revenue is spent on materials" used to make the products it sells, said Greg Schott, Agile's senior vice president of marketing.

And in the past it was typical for a company to make all the parts needed for its product, Schott said.

"Now almost everybody gets their stuff from suppliers," he said, noting that some manufacturers at one time used hundreds of suppliers.

However, Agile is "not building a marketplace." he said. "Our customers will buy Agile and have one-to-one connections with their suppliers."

Schott said Agile's focus is "managing the product record," one piece of the continuum that makes up an enterprise supply chain. CRM applications manage customer interaction, while ERP products manage the transactions on the back end, he said.

Agile works closely with several consulting firms to implement its products.

Deloitte Consulting's Bill Poston, a member of the company's high-tech manufacturing group (Deloitte Consulting eschews titles), said his unit has been working with Agile for a year. Typical Agile clients "are companies with a distributed supply chain architecture and a high velocity of engineering change or product change," Poston said.

Deloitte Consulting is creating Agile-based solutions for four clients, though Poston declined to identify them.

"[Agile has expanded its footprint with sourcing," Poston said. "That has made their offering more applicable to a broader range of customers."

Agile's technology can be integrated with ERP software from SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft and Manugistics, Schott said. Agile's products are available on a hosted basis or sold as a software license.