Ketera Announces New Inventory Data Cleansing Offering

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ketera, leading provider of On Demand Spend Management solutions and the Ketera Network, today unveiled its technology-enabled Inventory Data Cleansing offering, which allows customers to reduce costs from duplicate and obsolete inventory, minimize errors in buying and using replacement parts, and improve standards for inventory management.

“About 10% of excess inventory and false stock-outs are caused by an inventory data quality problem”

“About 10% of excess inventory and false stock-outs are caused by an inventory data quality problem,” said Steve Savignano, CEO of Ketera. “And according to a recent study by AT Kearney, attempts to manually cleanse inventory data are expensive, costing up to $80 per SKU. Every organization that I speak with feels this pain and has found it impractical to address the issue using manual methods. By leveraging technology to cleanse and normalize the inventory data, Ketera’s new service helps to cost-effectively eliminate the problem, reducing expenses associated with carrying excess inventory and eliminating potential lost revenue due to false stock-outs. We’re proud to have helped leading manufacturing and services companies focused on this issue achieve a 300% return on their investment in the first year alone.”

This problem is unavoidable because as companies use their ERP and procurement systems, they continue to add more parts and suppliers. Over time, the same part from a different supplier can easily get represented by another part number, leading to multiple occurrences of the same part under different codes. For those enterprises that have grown through acquisition, newly integrated systems usually contain the same part under various codes. Since the part description and other attributes for these parts are either missing, incoherently abbreviated, or incomplete in the system, it is difficult to assess if the two part numbers with different codes are actually the same part, belong to the same family, or are entirely different parts.

Ketera Network’s Inventory Data Cleansing offering (technology and services) leverages a knowledge base of over 43 million cleansed items, patent pending technology, and deep expertise in normalization, classification and enrichment of inventory data to cleanse inventory data quickly and cost-effectively. Key capabilities include:

Validation: Match inventory items against standards and then format, correct, and resubmit for authorization.
Normalization: Eliminate abbreviations and employ standard spelling and syntax in item descriptions, assign a noun (product category) and noun modifier (a product within a category), and eliminate duplicate records.
Categorization: Categorize items based on item descriptions using client-customized or Universal Standard Products and Services Classification (UNSPSC) categorization codes.
Parameterization: Populate additional category-specific attributes based on information from item descriptions and/or externally sourced data from the Internet or direct relationship with Manufacturer and Supplier.
Image Sourcing: Source images externally.
Translation: Translate inventory item into other languages.
Physical Inspection: Visually inspect item to obtain attributes.

All solution components of Ketera’s Inventory Data Cleansing offering are currently available in all geographies. Pricing is available upon request.

About Ketera

The Ketera Network couples a proven, scalable, and easy-to-use online spend management platform with a dynamic business community to simultaneously deliver cost savings for buyers and new business for suppliers. Thousands of buyers rely on Ketera to source and procure products and services, and analyze and manage their spend. Similarly, thousands of suppliers depend on Ketera Network to find new customers, provide access to their product and services catalogs, and conduct business. For more information about the Ketera Network, please visit: www.ketera.com