Best Practice in Spend Management: MSX International

Overview of MSX International
Based in Michigan, MSX International focuses on providing staffing, engineering, and other technical business services to the global auto industry (although it is trying to grow its non-automotive customer base). MSX groups its service offerings under three product families: collaborative engineering management, human capital management, and other collaborative services (quality relationship management, supply chain management, and custom communication services).

The company employs more than 7,900 professional staff at 78 operating locations in 26 countries and had 2002 net sales of approximately $800 million. So what was wrong at MSX?

Challenge Facing MSX International: Information Disconnect
Companies all over the world depend on MSX for strategic sourcing, contract management, supply base management, spot buy purchasing, and payment and billing services. They might have been surprised had they been allowed to peer inside MSX's operations and witness the disconnected flow of critical business information at headquarters. Like many of its competitors, MSX had all the "right" technology applications in place, but they had no way to connect them. In particular, the company's Commerce One procurement application and its J.D. Edwards financial management software solution were not linked, which meant that purchase order information pertinent to both applications could not flow easily between the two.

Why Is MSX International Remarkable?
Rather than continuing to waste time by manually retrieving information stored in the Commerce One procurement system and copying it into the J.D. Edwards financial management application for invoice and payment authorization, MSX opted to get rid of the disconnect entirely by implementing the Commerce One Conductor service platform. Now the two applications are connected, or integrated, and both can easily pull the purchase order information. In addition, connecting the two has eliminated the need to constantly develop customer interfaces.

How Have Service Platforms Benefited MSX International?
By implementing the Conductor service platform, the company should slash cycle times by as much as 50%. The costs related to developing customer interfaces should also drop dramatically. Lastly, the possibility of order processing errors occurring between the procurement and financial systems occurring should be eliminated. MSX was so inspired by the project that it has begun considering how the service platform could benefit the company in other ways.

This best practice was based on a customer success story of Commerce One.