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A $4.8 billion company with 32,000 employees, computer manufacturing giant Acer felt
hampered by its costly, cumbersome procurement system. Submitting orders to suppliers
required a large staff and numerous faxes and phone calls. Seeing e-business transform
many companies in diverse industries, Acer decided that it was time to leverage the power
of the Internet to make itself an easier company with which to do business.
IBM--one of the company's major original equipment manufacturer (OEM)
customers-approached Acer with an e-procurement solution that it had implemented in its
own U.S. operations.
 "Listening to IBM, we immediately recognized that its online procurement
system offered the efficiency Acer needed," says Palmer Lee, e-commerce director at
Acer, which is headquartered in Taiwan. "We also knew that, if we followed the IBM
Application Framework for e-business as a roadmap for development, going with an IBM
solution would meet our time-to-market criteria."
Working with IBM, Acer developed, in just five months, its business-to-business (B2B)
e-procurement extranet application using a suite of integrated solutions recommended
under the Framework.
Now Acer is delivering its products to its OEM customers faster than ever before--its
pledge is for 95 percent of its goods to be delivered in 5 days. Adds Lee, "With
e-procurement, we expect to save 2 percent to 3 percent on our annual procurement
budget--that's a savings of about $65 million to $100 million. And we expect to
recover our investment in two years."
 Java support key for future
The front-end for Acer's procurement extranet was developed with IBM WebSphere
Commerce Suite. IBM WebSphere Application Server, Advanced Edition facilitates the
exchange of XML-based forms over the Internet--providing Acer with a consistent means to
share information with its diverse supplier base. Lotus Domino serves as the
e-procurement workflow engine. IBM WebSphere Studio provides the Web application
development environment, and IBM WebSphere Performance Pack handles load balancing for
the IBM RS/6000 servers on which the extranet resides.
Notes Lee, "The WebSphere family of products presented important components of our
solution because of its support for Java(tm) technology and the stable development
environment it provides."
Acer's e-procurement application is integrated with its back-end Baan enterprise
resource planning (ERP) system. Information regarding orders and other supplier activity
is transferred to Baan, which handles finance and other areas.
Generating better deals
Today, Acer can elicit bids for materials and manage the order process completely
online. It now has an efficient way to take bids from suppliers worldwide--and encourage
lower prices because of the increased competition. Through online procurement, Acer has
streamlined its procurement staff, from 80 positions to 65, and has cut its inventory
storage time in half--from 25 days to 12 days. So far, Acer has 44 suppliers online and
expects to have a total of 200 by year-end and 500 by next year.
Counting on IBM
Acer is now working with IBM to develop "My Acer" supplier portals and a
supplier measurement system, which ranks suppliers based on performance.
"E-procurement, the first large-scale commerce project at Acer, is making a
fundamental impact on the way we do business," notes Lee. "IBM provided a solid
development framework and software to make this effort successful."
For more information, please contact your
IBM marketing representative or
IBM Business Partner.
Visit us at: ibm.com/e-business
For more information about Whirlpool Corporation, visit: www.acer.com
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2000
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All Rights Reserved
The e-business logo, IBM, RS/6000 and WebSphere are trademarks of International Business
Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both.
Domino and Lotus are trademarks of Lotus Development Corporation in the United States,
other countries or both.
Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United
States, other countries or both.
Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
This case study illustrates how one customer uses IBM products. Many factors have
contributed to the results and benefits described. IBM does not guarantee comparable
results. All information contained herein was provided by the featured customer. IBM does
not attest to its accuracy.
References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends
to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates.
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