American Express Co.

• Position: ELECTRONIC PROCUREMENT

Following on the launch of its S2S (Source-to-Settle) suite in April, American Express Co. has launched two new organically developed S2S solutions that it says were derived from its success at paring $1 billion from its own procurement costs over the past five years.

Amex says the new S2S solutions will optimize the procurement steps in the supply chain, increase control and compliance, ensure that employees access the negotiated rate for supplies and deliver a best-in-class B2C online buying experience--leading to an increase in realized cost savings and customer satisfaction. The two applications are S2S Invoice & Pay and S2S CatalogPro and Contract Audit & Recovery Solutions.

Lionel Le Meur, vice president of Electronic Invoice and Payment Services for Amex, says that over the years, companies have increasingly embraced sophisticated tools to improve both direct and indirect spending. But even as they see promise in improving supply chain processes, they are being stymied by manual procedures at the back-end stages of invoicing and payment by weak levels of adoption in electronic processing. "The challenge is connectivity," which S2S Invoice & Pay provides, he said in an interview.

Its own...