IBM Emptoris Suite

Version 10.0.4

Quick Start Guide

This guide introduces you to the IBM Emptoris Suite applications and provides information about installing and configuring the Emptoris applications.

National Language Version: To obtain the Quick Start Guide in other languages, print the language-specific PDF from the installation media.

Product overview

The IBM Emptoris Suite of products provide analytics software for procurement and supply chain operations with supplier, contract, and spend management.

The Emptoris suite has the following five primary products.

  • IBM® Emptoris® Contract Management: Application in which you can create, execute, and negotiate contracts and amendments. You can manage and maintain contracts for different suppliers.

    It also includes the Emptoris Contract Management Analytics application.

  • IBM Emptoris Program Management: Application in which you can create and monitor business goals, projects, tasks, milestones, approvals, and savings of projects.
  • IBM Emptoris Sourcing: Application in which sourcing events such as auctions, reverse auctions, multi-stage negotiations can be automated. You can create bids, invite suppliers for bidding, and analyze and award bids.
  • IBM Emptoris Spend Analysis: Application in which you can view, consolidate, and organize spend data for your organization.
  • IBM Emptoris Supplier Lifecycle Management: Application in which you can automate and manage the business processes such as supplier engagement, performance management, classification, development, risk assessment, and rationalization for your suppliers.

The following internal components are provided to all customers irrespective of whether they purchase one or all products.

  • IBM Emptoris Analytics Integration Module: Reporting application for IBM Emptoris Contract Management.
  • IBM Emptoris Strategic Supply Management Platform: Platform that hosts all applications. You can manage users, suppliers, organizations, locations, and categories from this application.
  • IBM Emptoris Strategic Supply Management Installer: Installer to install, configure, and integrate Emptoris products.

Step 1: Access the software and documentation

All Emptoris products are bundled together in the Emptoris Strategic Supply Management Platform. You can download the software for the Version, Release, and Modification releases from the Passport Advantage site at the following URL: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/howtobuy/passportadvantage/. The software for the Fix Packs and iFix releases is available on the Fix Central website at the following URL: http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/.

You can install the Emptoris products by using the IBM Emptoris Strategic Supply Management Platform Installer that is available in the bundled software.

For more information about the software, see the IBM Emptoris Suite Installation Guide.

Documentation for the Emptoris products is available on the IBM Knowledge Center at the following URL: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/.

Step 2: Evaluate the hardware and system configuration

Emptoris products need a set of hardware and software for all components in the suite. For information about the hardware and software configurations, see the following documents.
  • IBM Emptoris Suite Server System Requirements
  • IBM Emptoris Suite Client System Requirements

Step 3: Review the installation architecture

The following diagram represents the architecture of Emptoris products.
Architecture of Emptoris products

Step 4: Installing and configuring databases

Before you can install the Emptoris products, you must install the databases and configure them to be used with the Emptoris products. Multiple databases are required for the Emptoris products. To install the respective databases, see the installation documentation for those databases. For information about configuring the databases, see the following documents.
  • IBM Emptoris Suite Database Configurations Guide
  • IBM Emptoris Suite Reporting Configurations Guide

Step 5: Installing the Emptoris products

To install Emptoris products, you must prepare the system from which you will run the IBM Emptoris Strategic Supply Management Platform Installer. You must also prepare the servers on which you will install the Emptoris products.

After preparing the systems and configuring the databases, you can use the Emptoris Strategic Supply Management Platform Installer to install the Emptoris products on physical or virtual machines.

For information about the prerequisites and installation procedure, see the IBM Emptoris Suite Installation Guide.

Step 6: Getting started

After installing all Emptoris products successfully, you must configure the Emptoris Strategic Supply Management Platform for use with other products. You must create users, organizations, locations, categories, and set up data mastering in Emptoris Strategic Supply Management Platform. For information about the configurations that are required in the Emptoris Strategic Supply Management Platform, see the IBM Emptoris Strategic Supply Management Platform Administrator Guide.

More information

Refer to the following documents for information about the Emptoris products.

  • IBM Emptoris Suite Installation Portfolio
  • IBM Emptoris Sourcing Buyer Guide
  • IBM Emptoris Contract Management User Guide
  • IBM Emptoris Spend Analysis User Guide
  • IBM Emptoris Supplier Lifecycle Management Basic Functionalities Guide
  • IBM Emptoris Program Management User Guide