"With one single integration point, E2open shields us from doing the actual integration work ourselves," Morris says. "We don’t see any of those problems anymore. Now [integration work] is E2open’s headache."

Currently, Agere uses E2open’s hosted services for forecasting, generating orders, demand and supply synchronization, and logistics visibility. Of Agere’s 80 primary component suppliers hooked into E2open, four are "fully integrated," Morris says. That means that supply chain data "flows directly from their systems through E2open’s and to ours without anybody touching it at all." Agere’s Oracle 11i ERP system, based in its Allentown, Pa., headquarters, receives all the inventory and forecasting updates automatically. If they choose, Agere employees can go into the E2open site to see metrics on how their suppliers’ goods are tracking or to look at forecasts.

Those 76 Agere suppliers not yet fully integrated still are able to input their data into an E2open-hosted customized webpage, where they can view all transactions, orders and status. But even when those suppliers add supply chain data to the site manually, Agere’s side of the equation stays electronic, with the data flowing automatically into Agere’s Oracle system. From Morris’s point of view, even if all his suppliers never get to the full integration stage, it’s been worth it already because of the efficiencies gained from working with real-time data, the savings that come with reducing manual-entry errors and the greater systems integration achieved by Agere’s suppliers and customers.

Implementing E2open’s package only took Agere nine months, which is one of the big selling points of the outsourced, supply chain service providers: faster implementation times with measurable returns on investment.

Ron Vance’s investment in E2open was "very modest." "It’s not like we put a couple of million dollars into this thing," the CIO of Tyco Electronics says. "It’s more like a couple of hundred thousand."

Ranga Jayaraman, CIO of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, says that going with E2open’s system versus going with a homegrown one provided his company with a 33 percent reduction in onetime costs.

Staff Liberation Through Hosting

Along with reducing costs (which all CIOs are under pressure to do) and increasing the accuracy of forecasting and tracking (which all business users depend upon), CIOs also want to expend fewer internal IT resources on customization and troubleshooting in order to free up their staffers to work on more strategic projects, says Aberdeen’s Enslow.

At Imperial Sugar, an $800 million sugar processer and refinery, VP and CIO George Muller is running Sterling Commerce’s services for order management and inventory. Since going live with Sterling’s services in 2004, he’s found that his IS staffers are "managing exceptions rather than every transaction. They can," he says, "focus instead on higher-value activities."