gedas to Market Salion's Sales, Quoting and Price Management Solutions in North America
ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich., July 6 -- gedas, one of the world's leading IT service providers, announced today it has signed a contract to market Salion, Inc.'s leading sales, quoting and price management solutions to automotive suppliers in North America.
Under the agreement, gedas will provide focused sales, marketing and integration services around Salion's software solutions, leveraging gedas' deep knowledge of automotive suppliers and the supply chain.
"Salion is widely recognized as the leading solution provider of its kind," said Eric Verniaut, CEO of gedas USA. "With the price pressure that suppliers are under today, tools like Salion's to help manage sales, quoting and pricing are critical going forward. In fact, in our due diligence, we found that suppliers using Salion believe it gives them a real competitive advantage in a difficult marketplace. gedas feels the addition of Salion's solutions to its technology portfolio will allow us to bring a real value- added capability to all of our clients."
Allen Finch, president and CEO of Salion said: "Our agreement with a industry-leading IT services firm like gedas is testament to the value and performance of our solution -- and the critical environment facing automotive suppliers.
"It used to be that suppliers could afford a misquote and make up the margin later on, or even take a loss on an initial bid just to win it. But they can't do that anymore. Every quote has got to be right on the money, or when the OEMs ask for 3-6 percent, they're going to be upside down."
According to studies by the Center for Automotive Research, with sales, quoting and price management solutions like Salion's, auto suppliers can quickly harness the metrics with which to:
* Increase efficiency by as much as 30 percent, thereby cutting costs, or increasing the amount of time engineers have for innovation and pricing, and salespeople for customer contact and price enforcement.
* Increase revenue by as much as 5 percent, by winning two percent more business at targeted prices, or by ensuring better accuracy and enforcement of prices on business won.
* Increase profitability by as much as 10 percent, by only cutting in half the average price variance in bids won by better accuracy and price enforcement.
Customers of Salion's solutions include some of the largest suppliers in the automobile industry. gedas, by contrast, provides a single source for process consulting, systems integrations and industry expertise for its manufacturing and automotive clients. Currently, more than 20 major US manufacturers rely on gedas for IT support, including Johnson Controls, ArvinMeritor, Valeo, Honeywell Turbo and Andrew Corporation.
About Salion, Inc.
Salion, Inc., with offices in Austin, Texas and Detroit, Michigan, is one of the first enterprise software companies to provide technology solutions tailored to the unique selling, quoting and price management requirements of complex-goods manufacturers in the automotive industry. Founded in 2001, Salion works with several of the foremost suppliers in the Industry.
About gedas
A global IT service provider with teams working around the world, gedas develops, implements and operates individual IT solutions that create value- adding potential for its customers. In the automotive and manufacturing industries, as well as in the field of logistics, gedas has assumed a leading position with its strong business process expertise and its unique brand of full-service solutions. A 100-percent subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, gedas has more than 50 locations in 12 countries with headquarters in Berlin, and has successfully provided IT services for the past 20 years.