Plastics marketplace moves to chemical arena

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Oct 7, 2002

Omnexus is continuing the industry's growing trend to move business processes online with a new suite of technology services.

Omnexus is continuing the industry's growing trend to move business processes online with a new suite of technology services.

Having built a world-class global transaction platform and portal, Omnexus is leveraging this functionality, giving plastics and chemicals companies fast, flexible and affordable access to the very latest in online ordering technology.

Under its new alliance with Elemica, the leading global trading network for chemical companies, Omnexus will provide a solution tailored to the specific needs of the chemical industry for e-marketplace technologies.

The new Omnexus Leveraged Technology Solution (LTS) offers companies a highly adaptable, regularly upgraded choice of tools and services designed to meet the specialised needs of the chemical and plastics markets: these include the advanced Omnexus Global Transaction Platform, Portal Services, and Link Manager.

These services provide fast access to online procurement capabilities, branded to a company's own specific look and feel, all deliverable at a reasonable cost in a short time frame.

One of the first companies to avail itself of the Omnexus LTS service was DuPont, a founding member of Omnexus.

In addition to supporting the Omnexus public marketplace, DuPont implemented the Omnexus Global Transaction Platform for its own site's online ordering process in October 2001.

The common technology allows DuPont to share the same adherence to industry standards as Omnexus, an active proponent of the Chem eStandards initiative led by the Chemical Industry Data Exchange (CIDX).

Omnexus technology currently supports the most recent CIDX messaging standards, version 2.02.

"As an original Omnexus supplier, we recognised that leveraging the Omnexus transaction platform to fill a gap in our European online transactional capability would give us quick access to the technology we needed at a reasonable cost", said Linda Bankston, e-business director and chief information officer for DuPont Engineering Polymers.

"We were impressed with the speed of the rollout, from the initial needs analysis to implementation.

Omnexus continues to upgrade the platform and offer enhanced functionality".

The Omnexus Global Transaction Platform serves as the foundation of the Omnexus LTS offering.

The order platform's simple process requires only three steps for buyers to initiate orders using a single online order template, all in real time and on a global basis.

The platform also provides change order capabilities, search functionality and online reporting features.

The technology for the platform is flexible across many business rules, is available in five languages and multiple currencies, and is continually upgradeable according to a supplier's changing needs.

Other components within the Omnexus LTS suite which are available include: Portal Services, providing the capability to build and operate a company's complete online presence, including full content management and workflow features; Link Manager, which provides tools that establish flexible options to access data from a seller's internal systems or from a third party site; and seller connectivity solutions, offering various levels of integration.

"Omnexus has built a world-class technology that is highly functional, intuitive to customers and consistent with industry standards-all of which promote eAdoption", said Michael J Walsh, COO Omnexus.

"By leveraging this investment, Omnexus can offer a very cost-efficient solution which complements a company's own e-commerce strategies".

Omnexus LTS is available now for suppliers in the chemical and plastics industries, and can be implemented within a 60-day time period.