http://www.asite.com/community/index.php Blogs en ndoughty@asite.com Copyright 2010 2010-04-26T16:56:08+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/eprocurement-a-billion-and-counting/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/eprocurement-a-billion-and-counting/#When:16:56:08Z The Asite Exchange marked its one-billionth eProcurement transaction on April 4th 2010 One of the business-to-business technologies to come out of the late 90s dotcom boom was the idea of online marketplaces for specific vertical industries. This took the old guard technologies of ERP and EDI connectivity based on point-to-point integrations and brought it into the “internet age” based on XML and a hub-based architecture. The vanguard was led by systems providers such as Commerce One (now Perfect Commerce), Ariba (still going), Freemarkets (now part of Ariba), Purchase Pro, and others. Asite was the first eProcurement marketplace to be set-up for the property and construction industry. We started operating in 2001 based on the Commerce One marketplace platform - and have been managing transactions for our trading community ever since. Commerce One was an important part of our platform offering in the early years - but we long ago developed the full eProcurement hub mechanism into our own Asite platform, with no dependency on third-party intellectual property. From day one Asite set out to deliver a platform based on three legs: sourcing (find partners and suppliers, pre-qualify and get to contract), collaboration / project management (document exchange, structured workflow, and contract management), and trading (transactional eProcurement and supply chain integration). In later years we added in the unifying element that pulls this all together - Asite cBIM - and all of it, all the time, has been delivered on a pure utility-compute / Software as a Service model. We have always believed that these are the services that define the successful supply chain hub for construction and other asset-intensive and engineering-focused industries. Observers sometimes group Asite with companies offering much more narrow offerings focused on one or the other areas of the Asite platform. Companies such as Achilles, BiP Solutions or Bravo Solution in sourcing; BIW, 4Projects, or Aconex in project management (frequently called the ‘project extranet’ space); Causeway Tradex, Ariba, or COINS (beware the ERP vendor reaching outside the firewall - more to come on this topic…) in trading / eProcurement. All of these services have their own pluses and minuses of course - but suffice to say here that what they all have in common is they give you another data silo to worry about when what you really need are single views across your business. In order to achieve single views you need a platform which is open, natively extensible, and includes support for your business processes. If your business is project-based, deals with assets, or develops products then the Asite platform fits the bill. So, while we’ve been delivering this platform over the last nine years the piece that started it all off has continued working away behind the scenes, processing millions of commercial transactions per month between our customers - just plumbing really for the business web - mostly invisible but always on and totally dependable. The Asite Exchange processed its one-billionth eProcurement transaction on Sunday the 4th of April 2010 (which, by the way, was an invoice for 72 kiln-dried joists - also known as bandsills in the US). While the Exchange has of course continued to move on and is now looking at its billionth in the rear-view mirror - we’ve taken this opportunity to bring a little attention to the plumbing that keeps supply chains working! In honour of the occasion I’ll share a couple of stats from our learning over the years serving the industry: Average Purchase Order Value     £264.40 Average Invoice Value                   £496.39 Considering that the average cross-industry cost to raise a purchase order for both direct and indirect goods is widely quoted to be about £80 per order (i.e. nearly 1/3 the value of the PO) it is not difficult to understand why electronic trading has seen the take-up it has over the last decade! And here is a quick graph showing the profile of the transaction growth we’ve seen over the years as we went from zero to one-billion. I have a feeling that the next billion will take a lot less than 8½ years!      Check out case studies and other info here…     2010-04-26T16:56:08+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/asite-goes-mobile/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/asite-goes-mobile/#When:11:08:09Z A preview of the forthcoming Asite cMOBThis week I had the privilege of presenting at the IESA conference at Coventry University on the future of collaborative technology in construction. This is probably a somewhat grandiose and certainly an open-ended topic; but through our work at Asite I get the benefit of a lot of expertise in our customer base which I tried to pass on.  Construction IT is a broad remit. However, there is one regularly recurring theme across the breadth of it; and that is the mobile web. This isn’t just specific to the construction sector mind you,  with BBC News reporting a marked increase in usage levels of mobile internet access and the FT reporting that 16 Million UK users accessed the internet from mobile devices in December 2009; averaging 418 page views and 307 minutes per user. Whilst undoubtedly a great deal of the traffic relates to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, with an inherently mobile workforce the construction industry has a huge amount to gain from the mobile web! We have seen initiatives such as COMIT which have looked at how the sector could benefit from using mobile devices and the benefits in terms of time and efficiency savings are clear. To my mind, until now the problem has been the cost of development of the apps to run on the mobile, which has held back the take-up. So, with this in mind, Asite is very happy to give you a preview of the forthcoming Asite cMOB mobile application. As you can see from the screenshot Asite cMOB is a completely new way of accessing your Asite Workspaces and sharing information with your teams. This information is then available within the main Asite web application and vice-versa meaning mobile and office workers can seamlessly work together in real-time across the globe.   Where Asite mobile differs from other existing mobile applications, is that you can design your own apps to run on Asite mobile using our AppBuilder functionality. Once again, we’ll be providing some out of the box apps via our AppLibrary (such as Mobile RFIs, Mobile Defects and mobile Goods Receipting for procurement logistics) to get you started, but AppBuilder will allow you to quickly and easily design interfaces to send and receive information between mobile and office based users. Please keep an eye out for announcements regarding the formal launch of Asite cMOB in the next couple of weeks. If you wish to use any of the existing apps or start designing your own apps for Asite cMOB, or would just like a demonstration then please contact your workspace administrator or contact us directly at marketing@asite.com. 2010-04-16T11:08:09+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winners-list/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winners-list/#When:15:27:42Z Well done to all of the teams and especially those that won the Build London Live awards They are: BEST USE OF BIM FOR DESIGN, DRAMA AND EXCITEMENTKindly Sponsored By: SolibriWINNER: Team 4: Ryder Architecture   BEST MULTI-DISCIPLINARY BIM & USE OF INTEROPERABILITYKindly Sponsored By: CADDUCTWINNER: Team 2: 3DMB    BEST USE OF BIM FOR SUSTAINABILITY OR CONSTRUCTABILITYKindly Sponsored By: SynchroWINNER: Team 6: BIM Japan   CONTINUOUS PUBLICATION & COLLABORATIONKindly Sponsored By: ArtrAWINNER: Team 7: Super Team Singapore   JUDGES DISCRETIONARY PRIZE Kindly Sponsored By: OctagaWINNER: Team 3: 3D Blueprint     THE JEFF WIX 2009 BUILD LONDON LIVE AWARD Kindly Sponsored By: TeklaWINNER: Team 6: BIM Japan     2009-12-18T15:27:42+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-the-jeff-wix-2009-build-london-live-award/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-the-jeff-wix-2009-build-london-live-award/#When:15:25:11Z The Build London Live team are extremely proud to announce the Winners of the Build London Live 2010 Awards for:   THE JEFF WIX 2009 BUILD LONDON LIVE AWARD Kindly Sponsored By: Tekla WINNER: Team 6: BIM Japan “The judges were impressed with the use of Open BIM standards and that the team mapped their workflow in advance with excellent end product. The Scheme presented was praised for its aesthetics as well as for the amount of analysis work undertaken”     Final Rendering of BIM Japan Model Who started with some great concept sketches    And quickly moved into detailed modelling of their designs   And 24 hours in were delivering VR walk-throughs of the scheme  Part 1 Part 2 Continuing their impressive design development to take the Jeffery Wix BLL 2009 Award.  Well done to Yoshi and the team. 2009-12-18T15:25:11+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-judges-discretionary-prize/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-judges-discretionary-prize/#When:15:23:23Z The Build London Live team are extremely proud to announce the Winners of the Build London Live 2010 Awards for:   JUDGES DISCRETIONARY PRIZE Kindly Sponsored By: Octaga WINNER: Team 3: 3D Blueprint “Interesting and creative design, the Judges particularly liked the exploration of design options.”    Judges Honourable Mention: Team 8: Obelisk   Video of 3D Blueprint Massing Model 2009-12-18T15:23:23+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-continuous-publication-collaboration/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-continuous-publication-collaboration/#When:15:21:18Z The Build London Live team are extremely proud to announce the Winners of the Build London Live 2010 Awards for:   CONTINUOUS PUBLICATION & COLLABORATION Kindly Sponsored By: ArtrA WINNER: Team 7: Super Team Singapore  “The judges commented that as first timers the Singapore team surprised in what they achieved and published in 48 hours. Especially given that they only started using BIM tools 2 weeks before the competition!”    Super Team Singapore Model    2009-12-18T15:21:18+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-best-use-of-bim-for-sustainability-or-const/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-best-use-of-bim-for-sustainability-or-const/#When:15:19:45Z The Build London Live team are extremely proud to announce the Winners of the Build London Live 2010 Awards for:   BEST USE OF BIM FOR SUSTAINABILITY OR CONSTRUCTABILITY Kindly Sponsored By: Synchro WINNER: Team 6: BIM Japan  “The judges were impressed with the use of Open BIM standards and that the team mapped their workflow in advance with excellent end product. The Scheme presented was praised for its aesthetics as well as for the amount of analysis work undertaken”   Judges Honourable Mention: Team 5: Gravicon “The judges liked the use of energy analysis software by the Gravicon team. The design was highlighted as being exciting.”   BIM Japan Sustainability Analysis Slide   2009-12-18T15:19:45+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-best-multi-disciplinary-bim-use-of-interope/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-best-multi-disciplinary-bim-use-of-interope/#When:15:17:11Z The Build London Live team are extremely proud to announce the Winners of the Build London Live 2010 Awards for:   BEST MULTI-DISCIPLINARY BIM & USE OF INTEROPERABILITY Kindly Sponsored By: CADDUCT WINNER: Team 2: 3DMB “The most diverse and largest team used an impressive array of software tools. The judges commented on the high sophistication of the MEP model submitted.”    Animation of the 3DMB Services Design  2009-12-18T15:17:11+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-best-use-of-bim-for-design-drama-and-excite/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/build-london-live-awards-winner-best-use-of-bim-for-design-drama-and-excite/#When:15:15:17Z The Build London Live team are extremely proud to announce the Winners of the Build London Live 2010 Awards for:   BEST USE OF BIM FOR DESIGN, DRAMA AND EXCITEMENT Kindly Sponsored By: Solibri WINNER: Team 4: Ryder Architecture  “A excellent design from a first time competitor that impressed the judges”   Judges Honourable Mention: Team 1: Southern Axis Rendering of the Ryder Scheme 2009-12-18T15:15:17+00:00 /community/index.php/blog/entry/analysis-of-submissions-for-build-london-live/ /community/index.php/blog/entry/analysis-of-submissions-for-build-london-live/#When:12:52:53Z As we continue the process of assessing all of the great submissions from Build London Live, I thought it would be good to share with you some of the interesting stats that have been produced by Build London Live in terms of the team’s outputs.  To aid the Judges, we’ve generated some graphs to show how prolific the teams have been in terms of publishing documents. The first graph shows that there was continuous publication by the teams (albiet with peaks and troughs) throughout the 48 hours reflecting the teams spanning the globe.  The second chart shows even with the best will in the world, there’s always that last minute rush as people approach a deadline! 2009-12-17T12:52:53+00:00