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11th May 2009

PRESS RELEASE Thames Water increases AMP5 procurement efficiency with Business Collaborator e-Tendering

SaaS solution will reduce tender administration cost by 20% per annum

Business Collaborator Ltd, part of Unit4Agresso and a pioneer in collaboration software, today announced that Thames Water has implemented a SaaS (software-as-a-service) e-tendering solution to enable bids for its AMP5 projects to be managed more cost-effectively. The AMP5 programme starting in 2010 will involve a variety of major civil infrastructure work with project tenders ranging in value from £1m to £50m.

“As the largest water company in the UK, with over 13.6 million customers, we tender out a significant number of projects each year. This is an expensive and time consuming process. Tender documents often need amending or additional information needs to be provided in response to questions raised by bidders, so documentation often needs to be re-issued. This can lead to synchronisation and version control problems,” said Jamie Garnder, Head of Capital Procurement at Thames Water.

“The ultimate selection of Business Collaborator (BC) was based on cost, deployment time, fit with IT strategy and certainty of outcome. BC was able to deliver the right functionality quickly, whilst reducing both the risks and costs to Thames Water,” said Paul Meredith, Project Manager for the implementation of E Tendering at Thames Water.

Using Business Collaborator for e-tendering will enable all Thames Water’s Capital programme tender documentation and communications to be managed in a secure location; providing a common structure for contract documents, automating notifications to the supply chain on updates and edits, restricting access when required and providing a full audit trail.

Each tender will benefit from a 16% reduction in document assembly time alone saving as much as five days of time and money for Thames Water. It also makes additional time available for bidders in the supply chain, giving them approximately five days extra to work on their tender submission document content, by saving approximately 20% on contract assembling time at the end of the process. These savings have already been built into the company’s final business plan submission for AMP5.

“The collaboration software space is maturing and we are seeing more and more industry sectors deploying our solutions,” commented Sanjeev Shah, Founder and Managing Director at Business Collaborator Ltd. “Collaborative working is an ethos enabled by technology. We therefore ensure that the systems we implement truly reflect our clients’ working patterns meaning they don’t need to change their processes,” he continued.

Before Business Collaborator was deployed for e-tendering, Thames Water already use a core BC system as a project collaboration and document management repository so were familiar with its huge capability and ease of use. BC’s consultative approach involved creating a proof of concept model and testing it with Thames Water and Contractors before developing the fully automated tool. The sophisticated setup sits behind a simplified standard BC interface which is designed to maximize take-up and usage of the tool.

About Business Collaborator
Founded in 1994 Business Collaborator is a pioneer in collaboration software originally delivering successful collaboration solutions to the construction industry. It now has customers across all sectors, from architects and consultants through to developers, fit-out and facilities management, and delivers value to both small and large projects. Business collaborator is a member of the NCCTP (Network of Construction Collaboration Technology Providers), developing standards and promoting collaboration throughout the construction industry. BC is also participating in the 3 year pan-European ECOSPACE project, which aims to ensure that by 2012 every e-Professional in Europe will be empowered for real-time dynamic collaboration.

About Unit 4 Agresso
Unit 4 Agresso NV, is headquartered in the Netherlands and listed on both the Dutch and Norwegian stock exchanges. The Unit 4 Agresso group is an international developer of integrated business information and management systems providing secure e-business solutions to its customers. It develops, sells, implements and supports business software for the management and optimisation of business operations and has around 3500 staff in 19 countries supporting 5200 customers. It generated 2009 sales of €321 million, is headquartered in Sliedrecht, the Netherlands and publicly traded on Euronext Amsterdam (Symbol: U4AGR).

For more information, please contact:
Sarah Hughes
ShoutIT Communications
Tel: 0118 934 9344
Email:sarahh@shoutitpr.com

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