PurchasePro exececutive: E-commerce still growing

Kevin Ferguson

Wednesday, April 4, 2001 | 3:56 a.m.

Despite Wall Street's skeptical view of technology stocks, electronic business-to-business commerce is the wave of the future, a PurchasePro executive told a group of tourism and hospitality executives at a Las Vegas luncheon last week.

Matthew Yost, PurchasePro senior vice president of corporate development, urged his audience to be patient because e-commerce is still in its infancy.

"With the Internet, you expect everything to happen overnight," Yost said. "But we're really in the early stages of e-commerce. It's like the 1880s for the telephone lines."

He said when Las Vegas-based PurchasePro was formed in late 1996, the company was buying computers for its clients and teaching them how to use them.

PurchasePro helps businesses streamline their purchasing of products by establishing Internet marketplaces. These cyber-markets aim to lower purchasing costs by bringing together thousands of buyers and sellers on the Internet.

"It's about buying the right products, the right quantities at the right time at the right place at the right cost," Yost said.

PurchasePro has about 550 employees and about 140,000 business clients.

In its early days, PurchasePro catered to the hospitality industry, helping several Las Vegas Strip resorts get into business-to-business e-commerce.

"But it wasn't good enough for the Mirage just to be hooked with some of its clients. The goal is to have 100 percent connectivity," Yost said.

While it still assists large corporations, PurchasePro often promotes its technology to small to mid-size businesses.

Yost said businesses still need to be educated about the benefits of conducting their buying and selling in these cyber-marketplaces, noting that there are about 200,000-plus e-marketplaces and the savings and strong return-on-investments for these businesses are going to be the engine that drives these marketplaces.

Yost said PurchasePro executives are frequently asked by clients and potential clients to name the company's competitors.

"It's inertia. A lot of people think, 'why should I do something now, when I can do it three months from now?" Yost said, citing the wait-and-see approach with technology. "But you've got to take that first step."

Aside from inertia, PurchasePro competes with Commerce One and PeopleSoft, both based in Pleasanton, Calif., and Mountain View, Calif.-based Ariba.