CBUY.L Regulatory News (CBUY)

06 February 2013

cloudBuy plc ("cloudBuy" or "the "Company")

CONTRACT WIN

cloudBuy (AIM: CBUY), the cloud eCommerce marketplace, is delighted to announce that it has won a contract with Northamptonshire County Council in conjunction with The Grass Roots Group PLC to implement a consumer led care marketplace.

The care marketplace is planned to be live by 1 April 2014, initially focusing on Northamptonshire's managed social care provision, with plans to involve all of Northamptonshire's citizens in the selection and management of their care during the following 12 months.

The cloudBuy care marketplace is a key component of the solution, its roots in eCommerce means that it is designed to meet the needs of consumers whilst providing the control and transparency which the Northamptonshire Count Council requires. This is an exciting emerging area which is being shaped by innovative first movers, such as Northamptonshire. Local government spend on social care is in excess of £20bn and the overall market is estimated at up to £100bn.

cloudBuy and The Grass Roots Group PLC worked in partnership to create a new approach in order to bid for the contract. Both were delighted that their innovative approach was recognised and that they were selected in the face of considerable competition.

Andy Lister, Chief Operating Officer of The Grass Roots Group, commented on the partnership as follows, "To us, partnership is about making 'the whole more than the sum of its parts'. I am determined that Grass Roots will play our role to ensure that the citizens of Northamptonshire, when managing care or support for their loved ones, will experience the same levels of engagement and empowerment that they might expect from today's leading consumer-class websites."

The Grass Roots Group is a world-leading engagement business, headquarted in Tring, Herts., with over 1,000 employees and operating in fifteen markets around the world.

Northamptonshire County Council is regarded as one of the UK's most forward looking local authorities with an impressive track record of designing and implementing successful partnership programmes.

Dr Paul Blantern, Chief Executive of Northamptonshire County Council, said, "Meeting the challenge of ensuring the future delivery of integrated care services for all citizens now and in the future cannot be underestimated. The e-marketplace and integral e-payment is central to this agenda. The initiative that the consortium has helped shape, capitalises on the combined skills, knowledge, and expertise of cloudBuy, Grass Roots and Northamptonshire County Council and is genuinely ground breaking in a number of respects."

Ronald Duncan, Chairman of cloudBuy plc, commented, "We are delighted by this contract win as it underscores our leading position in this emerging market. cloudBuy care is unique in its support for care provider ecommerce, so cloudBuy has a significant first mover advantage in providing ecommerce to care providers. 

At a time of ageing populations and reduced budgets, our cloudBuy care technology delivers significant improvements in care at reduced cost for both care providers and councils."

For further information please contact:

About cloudBuy PLC

cloudBuy is the world's leading transactional Cloud Platform with over 1 million buyers. The platform supports B2B eCommerce and eProcurement across a range of public and private sector organisations providing a secure, controlled transactional environment for B2B trading. The technology is unique in the B2B market, in that it delivers the B2C internet shopping experience in a business environment. The platform has been rebranded to cloudBuy.com for global expansion with Visa and partner banks. The platform is PCI DSS accredited, providing secure, integrated financial transactional capability, delivering savings to both the buyer and the supplier through greater accounts payables accuracy, reduction of manual processes and elimination of paper.

cloudBuy provides an immediate business case using SpendInsight. SpendInsight was developed to recognize, match and classify products and services, providing buyers with greater visibility to spend data, and supports the identification of cashable savings, through unique product level matching artificial intelligence. The output from this is then passed to the Visa member bank, for analysis by Visa to identify which suppliers accept card payments currently and compute the potential card rebate to fund the B2B ecommerce platform.

For more information, visit www.cloudbuy.com

END