Requisite survives tech bubble's burst.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: Hightech coloradobiz

REQUISITE TECHNOLOGY INC., A WESTMINSTER software maker, hired a chief technology officer last month after allowing the position to go vacant for a full year.

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Chuck Price, an experienced engineering executive at two Denver-area e-commerce companies, joins Requisite May 1. He will be the architect of Requisite's future product development.

During the technology-industry bust of 2001 and 2002, chief financial officers--the accounting types who finagle new financing to keep a company operating but who are not supposed to finagle the books--were more important to technology companies than the tech types who dream up and write software.

E-commerce, Requisite Technology's venue, was especially hard hit by the drop in demand for new products that came with the bursting of the tech bubble. But Requisite, after significant downsizing, including 90 layoffs just last December, has survived the bust and continues to sell product.

That's partly because the 1990s expansion of technology at a variety of companies usually left out an important ingredient that Requisite Technology supplies, and partly because Requisite's products are electronic catalogs, said company spokesman Jim Wilson.

Companies worldwide "gorged on technology" during the boom years of the tech revolution, Wilson said, and now they need to "find a way to optimize" the tech equipment they have. Requisite's software creates electronic catalogs to help workers throughout a company, from management to a parts buyer, sort through the multiplicity of items involved in a manufacturing process to search for the right product at the right price.

"You still have to find what you want to buy," said Wilson, citing the confusion that occurs in huge Fortune 500 companies when management wants to buy the cheapest part, buyers want to buy the most available part and get it delivered to the factory on time, and engineers want the part that fits perfectly in a hole or a square on a template.

While Requisite started in 1993 as an attempt to develop software...