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| pool /pool/ n. A grouping of resources for the common advantage of the participants |
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| Service Description |
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| Data Upload and Management
Our sparesFinder service is all about information. The value of information is determined by many factors, and we have developed our service to enable you to extract great value from your data in the most cost-effective manner. |
Inventory is pooled
into one,
easy to
access web-based
application. |
One of the most important factors about information is timeliness. From the outset we designed our system to link quickly and automatically to your core inventory systems. The initial setup typically takes less than 4 hours and will need no further work to continually keep your data held at our site up- to-date. We now have over 200 live installations of our upload utility worldwide, the largest one handling over 500,000 lines of data from 13 different systems. |
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Once we have successfully received your data, the next stage is to enhance it such that you and other subscribers can quickly find what you are looking for. The quality of upload data does vary, and we would always encourage investment in data cleaning using our Masterpiece tool. However, even with relatively poor standards of input, our Key Word Recognition engine is able to pick out important patterns and categorise inventory into specific groups. We also take the opportunity to normalise fields which tend to vary slightly, such as Manufacturer's Name, Currency Name, and Unit of Measure. |
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| Access Control and Interface The sparesFinder service is delivered through your web browser, and can be accessed either from the Internet using standard login procedures, or through a direct link into your Intranet.
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Flexible solutions,
designed around the
needs
of your
organisation. |
With an Intranet link, you can choose to allow completely open access to the system, although some of the transaction facilities are disabled without the use of individual ID and passwords. Our experience has shown that direct links from a corporate intranet have tended to increase system usage and customers using these see greater benefit.
You are able to implement your own bespoke colour scheme and graphics throughout the sparesFinder service pages to reflect corporate branding. |
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| Group Support
We have developed the e-collaboration aspects of sparesFinder by using a sophisticated set of algorithms that allow us to build communities of subscribers with different rules. This level of flexibility really adds value to the data you find on a search; you will never see information about a spare part that the holder does not wish you to see, and you will only ever find a spare part that is available to you. |
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| Corporate Group |
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Each site in Company A manages its spare parts inventory with its own ERP, CMMS or Inventory Control System. If these systems are not linked, users will not be able to see inventory held at other sites.
By using the sparesFinder grouping feature, Company A can quickly achieve full inventory visibility across all their sites.
Better internal inventory visibility leads to reduced stock levels and less plant down time. |
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| Regional/industry Peer Group |
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Company A may form a Group with other similar companies in their region.
Group members can then share each others' surplus inventory information.
They are able to rapidly find and trade surplus spares and equipment between companies, releasing the capital tied up in these assets.
For example, access to full details of stock levels at a particular factory may be made available only to users at other factories belonging to the same company. Other members of a special user community the company has joined (perhaps an industry grouping) may be allowed to see items where the stock holding is above a defined level. Finally, the whole subscriber community may be able to see items flagged as excess stock.
Our Group Support service is entirely free, and we will discuss your options and decide your configuration when you join the system. Alterations to your set-up can be made quickly at any time, but, for reasons of security, they are always controlled by sparesFinder personnel. |
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| Searching
The objective of our search facility is to enable you to find the part that you require that is immediately available to you, and is in the most convenient location for you. The process and technology behind this simple requirement is complex, and has been developed over several years in conjunction with our users.
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Simplification brings
efficiencies
- better
and faster
search results |
Our standard search screen offers considerable flexibility. It enables you to search by Manufacturer's name and part number, by equipment category, by up to 6 of your own bespoke upload fields, by geographical locations, by industry type and, remarkably, using fuzzy logic on up to 1300 characters in the description field. Any combination of these, and other, search criteria may be used; you could search for all Pressure Transmitters made by the manufacturer Rosemount, and located in Norway. Alternatively, you could search for any description that contains the words "Pressure", "50KPA" and "Rosemount".
The sparesFinder search engine then displays details of all currently available items matching the search term. The more precise the search term input, the more accurate the search results. |
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| Transacting
When a search is conducted, the information presented includes all the descriptive fields about an item, and the contact details (telephone number and email address) of the subscribers who have the item available in stock. A price may or may not be shown, at the discretion of the part owner. Subscribers are generally other spare parts users, but may also be suppliers.
Once the potential sources of the item are found, it is up to the searcher to establish contact and agree terms. This can be done completely offline, and it is typical that many transactions involve direct contact. We recommend the use of our transaction forum where you can monitor your sales and purchase requests from other users for your excess inventory.
There is normally no involvement by sparesFinder personnel in the transaction process and we do not make any charge on transactions; the only charge to the subscriber is the annual subscription.
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sparesFinder enhancements
developed and
tailored
to your needs |
Whatever your organisation's needs we have an enhancement to help you achieve greater efficiencies. These have all been developed alongside our customers and are proven to maximize the benefits from your sparesFinder solution. See below to match the enhancement to your need. |
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Who are you? |
How can we enhance your sparesFinder solution? |
Enhancement |
| Multi Site Company |
Creates a multi-site MRP process to lock in the process of not buying what you already own elsewhere
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Pre Procurement |
| Suppliers |
Bespoke e-commerce solution to make your inventory data available to your customers
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Supplier enablement |
| Oil and Gas |
Specific solution for OCTG data users
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OCTG |
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