Andersen Gives Yantra a Vote of Confidence
S. McVey - December 22, 2000
Yantra and Andersen Consulting have announced a broad strategic alliance to provide supply chain solutions through PureEcommerce, a Web-based customer transaction management solution for extended enterprises; PureEcommerce was launched by Yantra in November 1999.
PureEcommerce modules execute and manage complex orders, through order creation, allocation to supply nodes, modification, exception monitoring and returns. The application provides real-time visibility into complete order information across complex distribution systems, which makes it an asset in software implementations for multi-enterprise environments. Founded in 1995, Yantra is growing quickly in response to demands for efficient transaction management created by digital marketplaces. As a contribution to continued growth and a vote of confidence, Andersen has taken an equity stake in Yantra in conjunction with the alliance.
Large, full-service consulting firms like Andersen deal almost exclusively with projects involving multiple enterprises or multiple applications. Yantra is ideal for this purpose as it brings to the table an application best suited to environments where large volumes of transactions must be passed efficiently among extra-enterprise partners. PureEcommerce modules occupy a position between traditional enterprise applications (ERP, supply chain planning, EAI-enterprise application integration) and the commerce servers that interface to customers, marketplaces, suppliers and shippers via the Internet as well as other channels. Because it links crucial components of a company's overall technical architecture, Yantra PureEcommerce represents a valuable tool in Andersen's implementation arsenal.
A potential conflict arises because EAI software can arguably perform the same core functions that PureEcommerce offers, which raises the question, why install Yantra at all. The inclusion of Yantra in system architectures depends on Andersen's ability to convince clients that PureEcommerce is better at handling large transaction volumes than EAI software would be alone.
Users should not read too much into the announced partnership of Andersen and Yantra, in spite of the benefits Yantra can bring to large projects. Andersen has forged similar alliances with dozens of software vendors through the years and many of these constituted little more than marketing deals. The argument that since a vendor has partnered with Andersen, it "must" be a safe bet can be persuasive, but users should review other aspects of a vendor's story that may be brought in to fulfill a role in system architecture. These aspects include corporate viability, corporate strategy, and corporate service and support capabilities - the same criteria that apply when considering a best-of-breed vendor independent of a consulting partner.
