PR Newswire
(Copyright (c) 2001, PR Newswire Association, Inc.)
SAN DIEGO, Jan. 24, 2001 (PR Newswire)

OrderFusion, Inc., a pioneer in e-commerce solutions for supplier enablement, today announced that it has helped RoweCom, Inc., and the hubs of mwSupplier and EnergyWorkspace pass requirements to become Ariba Ready(TM), a new Ariba initiative for communicating the integration capabilities of suppliers and other trading partners accessing the services of the Ariba Commerce Services Network(TM) (Ariba CSN).

The Ariba Ready initiative was created to ensure consistent and accurate communication between buyers, internet market makers and suppliers. It enables buyers and market makers to quickly identify and select appropriate organizations to trade with and denotes the level of technical integration of suppliers connected to the Ariba CSN. Ariba Ready uses a well-defined process and consistent measurement standards to validate the level of integration. At present, over 30,000 selling organizations are available on the Ariba CSN.

"OrderFusion is pleased to be able to help our customers add value to their e-procurement cycles and processes by becoming Ariba Ready," said Tom Hennings, CEO of Order Fusion. "With our customers carrying the Ariba Ready validation, it shows they're prepared to meet the needs of the e-procurement process."

To qualify for Ariba Ready status, a supplier must demonstrate scalable processes for managing digital transactions between the Ariba CSN and their e-commerce environment. Ariba Ready status is available at no charge to all suppliers integrated to the Ariba CSN.

About OrderFusion

OrderFusion, headquartered in San Diego, is a pioneer in commerce solutions for supplier enablement. The company uniquely looks at the commerce challenge from the supplier's central reference -- the sales order -- to deliver the first complete B2B sell-side commerce platform, from pre-sales marketing to sales transactions, order management, fulfillment and post-sales analysis. Through the award-winning Orders of Magnitude platform, OrderFusion provides manufacturers and distributors with a unified solution for achieving the same B2B internet selling success as large manufacturers with made-to-order commerce systems.

In addition, OrderFusion was the first company to enable suppliers to use Ariba's full "punchout" capability based on Commerce Extensible Markup Language (cXML) standard, an emerging internet standard for exchanging supplier product content and transaction information between buyers and suppliers. "Punchout" enables Ariba's customers to choose and procure product from local catalogs or browse the supplier's Web site for product information or quotations to use for a requisition. Electronic messages also allow purchase orders to be communicated to the supplier to be turned into sales orders and for invoices to be subsequently sent electronically to the customer. For more information, contact www.orderfusion.com.

All company or product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

For further information please contact Kristi Craft of OrderFusion, Inc., 858-450-4847, kcraft@orderfusion.com; or Lisa Porter of Porter Creative Group, 949-752-5891, lporter@portercreative.com, for OrderFusion, Inc.