BayanTrade press release

(Manila, Philippines, October 27, 2004) – BayanTrade – the region’s premier sourcing, procurement and supply chain services provider – has announced a strategic partnership with leading UK-based supply chain solution (SCS) provider State of Flux. Their combined efforts will incorporate BayanTrade’s e-sourcing and e-procurement technologies to support State of Flux’s supply chain solutions offering to its clients in Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom.

State of Flux is a leading SCS provider in the UK and Europe, working with Fortune 500 companies such as BT, Cisco, Barclays and Cable & Wireless. It supports clients by providing consulting services for both the revenue generating and the supply side of the organization.

“We were looking for something different from the traditional UK, Europe e-Procurement and e-Sourcing service providers and saw BayanTrade as a refreshing change to this,” Alan Day, State of Flux managing director, said. “We wanted a best-practice organization to support our supply chain solutions offering.”

Day said BayanTrade’s solutions were not geographic specific and would be ideal for State of Flux’s clients, which are headquartered in UK and Europe but also operate in multiple markets all over the world.

Day was recently in the Philippines to firm up projects that will bundle BayanTrade's hosted e-sourcing and e-procurement technologies and some of the services to its existing clients. Among the projects in the pipeline are with a global consulting company and a multinational bank.

BayanTrade president and COO Dante Briones said the alliance with State of Flux is part of the company’s objective of extending its market reach. “By partnering with companies like State of Flux, whose business is complementary to ours, BayanTrade can immediately start offering products and services without having to set up actual operations in that region,” Briones said.

The partnership with State of Flux and its entry into the UK and western European markets follow BayanTrade’s inroads in the Asian market. BayanTrade kicked off a regional expansion program in January by setting up an operations office in Singapore called TradeConnect. BayanTrade is also finalizing a joint venture that would facilitate its entry into the biggest global market of the future – China. The company has also entered the Indonesian and Thai markets.

“As we continue to be the undisputed third party procurement hub of the country, with more than US$ 500 million of processed purchases to show for it, we continue to expand our reach to the rest of the world,” Briones said.

Shown in photo are: Alan Day, State of Flux managing director, Daphane Flores, BayanTrade alliance manager, Melanie Gaite, BayanTrade marketing director and Dante Briones, BayanTrade president and COO.

http://www.bayantrade.com/News/newsdetail.asp?ID=135