Vought Aircraft Gains Greater Control over Corporate Spend with Ketera Spend Analysis Service; Spend Analysis Service Drives Sourcing and Purchasing Compliance Initiatives.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 9, 2003

Ketera Technologies, the leading provider of 'on demand' spend management solutions, today announced the success of its Ketera Spend Analysis(TM) service at Vought Aircraft Industries, one of the world's largest independent suppliers of major airframe structures for military and commercial aircraft.

"Ketera Spend Analysis gives us a consolidated view of corporate spend across disparate systems and across the enterprise," said Kendall Lake, Manager of Procurement Systems at Vought Aircraft Industries, Inc. "This gives us the clear insight needed to identify opportunities for savings through sourcing and procurement compliance initiatives."

Ketera Spend Analysis is delivered to Vought as a turnkey service under which Ketera collects unstructured spend data from multiple sources and delivers back to Vought a set of reports providing a consolidated view of spending, including views by category and supplier buying organization. Vought users can "slice and dice" the data directly online using an easy to use reporting service provided by Ketera.

"Like most organizations, we were generating and capturing tremendous amounts of data about our purchasing activities, but we had a fractured view of this activity," said Pam Stewart, Administrator, e-Procurement and Purchasing Card Programs at Vought Aircraft. "Pulling this information together in the past was not possible because of the time and labor commitment required. With Ketera, we rapidly pulled together our disperse data and structured it into meaningful information. Information we could take action on."

Vought executives said the most significant area of focus of their spend analysis program was in identifying areas for improved sourcing and supplier relationships. "Our strategic sourcing analyst uses the Ketera solution constantly," said Pam Stewart. She added that the service provides insight into which categories of spend and suppliers hold the most significant opportunities for savings: "Our actual spend in some commodity groups and with some suppliers was greater than previously estimated. Some of these commodities and suppliers then jumped over our threshold and became attractive candidates for sourcing opportunities or to add to our e-procurement program."

In addition to making sourcing initiatives more effective, Vought is also using the spend analysis service to find the areas where maverick or off-contract spending is occurring: "Although we have an established and preferred agreement with one supplier in a specific category, individual buyers were purchasing supplies from more than 25 other suppliers using a variety of methods, including expense reports. Ketera Spend Analysis helped us identify this problem, so that now we can properly address it," said Stewart.

Vought Aircraft began using Ketera Procurement in January 2002, building upon and integrating with its implementation of the American Express Corporate Purchasing Card program. In late 2002, Vought expanded its use of the Ketera Spend Management suite by employing the Ketera Spend Analysis service.

With Ketera and American Express, Vought now has a complete spend management program, which extends from spend analysis and sourcing, to procurement and payment, through to reconciliation and analysis.

"Vought Aircraft is really a case study in the success of Ketera," said Ruby Sahiwal, Chief Operating Officer, Ketera Technologies. "By extending the value of spend management at Vought, we've extended and broadened our relationship with them."

Headquartered in Dallas, Vought Aircraft Industries employs more than 6,000 people at seven locations and has annual sales exceeding $1 billion.

About Ketera Technologies

Ketera Technologies provides spend management solutions as an "on demand' service, providing companies with the technology and services needed to find, get and keep savings at a low cost of ownership.

Ketera Spend Management(TM) includes applications for spend analysis, sourcing, procurement, contract management and supplier enablement. The Ketera difference is our "on demand" delivery model which combines hosted spend management applications with the 'heavy lifting' services required for success, including supplier enablement; hardware infrastructure, project resources, system administration and solution upgrades.

Ketera Technologies is an IBM business partner, providing technology for IBM's Leveraged Procurement Service (LPS), an e-Business On Demand offering. Located in Mountain View, CA, Ketera is a private company founded by American Express (NYSE:AXP). Other investors in the company include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Foundation Capital, TPG and Bain & Company. For more information about Ketera Technologies and the Ketera Spend Management(TM) suite of services, please visit www.ketera.com.