ICG Commerce Expands Services Procurement Solutions

New Program and Technology Enhancements Reinforce Ability To Help Companies Manage Both Purchase and Execution of a Wide Range of Services

PHILADELPHIA - Tuesday, November 02, 2004 - ICG Commerce, a leading procurement services provider, today 
announced enhancements to its services procurement offering, including new category management programs and 
technology improvements designed to help companies further capitalize on untapped savings opportunities in service-related 
buying categories. 

The latest research on the subject from the Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies (CAPS) shows that services 
represent nearly a third of companies' overall spend, yet few organizations manage this area of procurement as 
effectively as they would like to. Three-quarters of CAPS survey respondents describe purchasing and managing the 
delivery of services as either "difficult" or "very difficult" as compared to goods.

To address the market's need for greater control over services spend, ICG Commerce integrates deep category 
expertise with leading technology to help companies more effectively manage key buying categories such as labor, 
marketing services, facilities management, telecommunications services, and travel. The company's dedicated team of 
experts leverages category specific technology to help companies perform sourcing, day-to-day transaction 
management and category and vendor management services (VMS) that yield ongoing cost and performance 
improvements. 

ICG Commerce's services eProcurement platform, allows companies to efficiently process transactions from a single 
interface, for many different types of services or payment structures – time-based, volume-based, project-based, fixed-
price, contingency, retained, milestone and activity-based. ICG Commerce has enhanced its services procurement 
technology to allow "universal" requisitions to be established with activity-based rates. As service providers record 
which activities are performed, the system automatically applies the correct rate for each activity on bills and invoices, 
greatly reducing errors and time-consuming reconciliation activities. This new functionality can be broadly applied to 
many labor related service categories, including repair, installation, IT contracting, consulting, light industrial, training 
and others. 

"Enterprise spending on services – ranging from temporary workers and consultants to marketing, legal and facilities 
management – represents a large but largely unmanaged proportion of enterprise spending," stated Andrew Bartels, 
Forrester Research Industry Economics and Data vice president in a report published earlier this year. "Standard 
eProcurement applications don't help because they only focus on the initial buying and not on the day-to-day 
management of services against a contract."

In addition to offering enhanced technology, ICG Commerce is also now providing ongoing Vendor Management 
Services (VMS) to support the day-to-day fulfillment and management of contingent labor related purchases. ICG 
Commerce experts leverage the RealExchange for Services technology to process temporary staff requisitions, ensure 
timely fulfillment of temporary staff orders and timecard approvals and provide ongoing user support and issue 
resolution.

The comprehensive and integrated model for services procurement has proven so effective that a number of companies 
including AVAYA, Vought Industries and QualxServ have engaged ICG Commerce to fully manage select service 
categories. Earlier this year, ICG Commerce was named a finalist in the Outsourcing Center's highly competitive 
Outsourcing Excellence Awards for its labor services procurement work on behalf of customer QualxServ. 

"Companies that have initiated procurement improvement programs are expanding these programs to include services 
categories in order to deliver an even greater impact to the bottom-line," said Danny Ezrol, ICG Commerce's director 
of services sourcing and category management. "Having implemented services procurement programs for some of the 
world's leading companies over the past several years, it is clear that the proper balance of category sourcing expertise, 
technology and ongoing support can yield tremendous benefits in terms of impact to the bottom line as well as the 
ultimate quality of service received."

About ICG Commerce, Inc.
 
ICG Commerce is the leading procurement outsourcing specialist delivering comprehensive source-to-pay 
services. Results-driven leaders access ICG Commerce’s experienced resources and market intelligence to 
better manage procurement and logistics spend, gaining significant savings and enhanced visibility and control. 

ICG Commerce is a privately held company founded in 1992 and a member of Internet Capital Group's 
(Nasdaq: ICGE) network of partner companies.  The company has earned recognition from Forbes, Fortune, 
The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) and leading industry analysts for its 
leadership in procurement outsourcing. For more information: www.icgcommerce.com