15 Sep 2010 07:00
Under Embargo until 7:00AM 15 September 2010
@UK PLC
("@UK" or the "Company")
NEW WEBSITE AND GOOGLE PROMOTION
Richard Benyon MP, Minister for Natural Environment and Fisheries, will launch the new @UK PLC market place, currently available at http://www.beta.uk-plc.net, on 7 October 2010. The Directors believe that @UK PLC is one of the largest e-Procurement marketplaces in the world with over 1 million users to date, and the new market place will also show users the environmental impact of any purchase along with the ability to offset the environmental impact.
Google are supporting the launch with a promotion to @UK PLC's customers (with a total in-kind value of £10m), to encourage those customers to increase their Google-based advertising and traffic through the platform.
@UK PLC is making a significant change in its business model, with its new market place promoting its suppliers to the wider internet in an open format. Previously the 3 million products available on the @UK PLC e-procurement platform have only been available to a limited number of buying organisations and through search engine promotion of the individual supplier sites.
The search engine promotion of the platform's individual supplier sites has resulted in over 5,000 public sector organisations purchasing through @UK PLC platform. Over 80 per cent. of public sector organisations have not yet implemented e-Procurement in a meaningful manner, and by making it easy for both public sector and private sector to purchase from suppliers on the @UK PLC system, @UK PLC hope to see a significant increase in spend and take up by buyers.
@UK PLC intends to promote the new market place to the 300,000 organisations that purchase through the platform.
On 14 July this year at the Business of Bio-Diversity Summit @UK PLC launched e2class, its ethical and environmental classification system, along with GreenInsight, its ethical and environmental analysis system. The new @UK PLC marketplace uses e2class as its core classification system. This allows all items on the marketplace to have environmental information associated with the goods and services.
As announced at the Business of Bio-Diversity Summit, the new marketplace allows for the Carbon footprint of every shopping basket to be calculated, and the option to offset this footprint is part of the system. The calculation and offset functionality will be released following the launch date.
@UK PLC has proven that it is possible to sell significant amounts to large organisations via search engine optimisation. Google's support to get customers using Google advertising will help speed up this trend.
@UK PLC believes that it is leading the way by becoming the first e-Procurement marketplace to show the content that is available to buyers; encouraging take-up by those organisations that have not yet adopted e-Procurement, and increasing environmental awareness by showing the environmental impact of purchases.
@UK PLC Contact
Ronald Duncan
Chairman
Tel 0118 963 7000
Beaumont Cornish Limited
Roland Cornish
Tel 0207 628 3396
Notes to Editors
@UK PLC is the UK market leader in Platform as a Service using Platform Generator and provides secure cloud based ecommerce, eprocurement and email services to business and the public sector with over 1 million users.
Platform Generator provides a leading UK electronic marketplace, has formed over 200,000 companies using the SiteGenerator ecommerce engine. @UK PLC's SiteGenerator ecommerce, part of the Platform Generator, allows suppliers to trade with all major finance systems, @UK PLC's marketplace and other leading marketplaces.
@UK PLC has a Buying Solutions framework contract for the provision of its new "Spend Insight™" Spend Analysis services, that allows its services to purchased by any public sector body with out the requirement for a further tendering process.
@UK PLC's Platform Generator software speeds up secure software development and allows @UK PLC to provides a secure internet eMarketplace enabling buyers such as local authorities, schools and hospitals to buy online from commercial suppliers ranging from large corporations to small to medium enterprises (SMEs). This allows buying and selling to take place with no paperwork and a reduced chance of errors through transposition, achieving major savings throughout the supply chain.
@UK PLC has a key competitive advantage as an ecommerce based marketplace it ensures that prices are correct from requisition through to payment, where catalogue based marketplaces are unable to support carriage, complex pricing and configurable products.
@UK PLC also offers services to new businesses, including incorporation, company secretarial services and filing annual returns.
@UK PLC is included in the Software and Computer Services Sector (9530). For further information please visit www.uk-plc.net
CBUY.L (CBUY)