ATLANTA and PITTSBURGH, April 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Paladin Associates, provider of strategic sourcing consulting solutions with expertise in finance and operations management, has partnered with CombineNet, the leader in advanced sourcing technology, to bring improved sourcing solution capabilities to mid-sized enterprises.

Paladin Associates, whose staff brings deep spend category experience and knowledge of best practices at Fortune 500 companies, now offers the CombineNet Advanced Sourcing Application Platform (ASAP) to deliver swifter time-to-benefit for client sourcing initiatives. Paladin's use of CombineNet ASAP will enable their clients to achieve new cost reduction results across a wide range of enterprise spend areas, while reducing supply chain risk and improving overall operational efficiencies.

"This partnership will address a significant solution gap that exists within many mid-sized companies today, which is the absence of an effective optimization-driven sourcing tool that can dramatically improve the supplier bid process and easily optimize sourcing awards decisions," said Robert Matthews, Executive Partner at Paladin. "CombineNet ASAP will allow our expert services teams to deliver this key strategic advantage to clients."

CombineNet's Vice President of Strategic Business Development, Dean Arnold, stated: "Our strategy at CombineNet is to make our advanced sourcing product easier to adopt and drive benefit to a larger array of customers.  Paladin is an ideal partner for us to help mid-market clients achieve results similar to those found within our largest customers who are using our sourcing technology."

The CombineNet ASAP technology is leveraged as part of Paladin's project consulting engagements for any spend category: direct materials, indirect spend, transportation, packaging, and corporate services.  Paladin's use of CombineNet ASAP will help clients conduct better online supplier bid collection, consider alternative supplier responses, consider price and non-price factors, and run optimal scenarios to arrive at best-value supplier awards decisions.

About Paladin Associates

Paladin Associates Inc. is a sourcing consulting and services company of experienced professionals with extensive financial and operating expertise in Fortune 500 organizations. Paladin Associates provides spend analysis, sourcing staff resource augmentation, sourcing event management, and cost take-out programs on a daily fee or contingency basis. Contingency-based programs afford clients risk-free cost reduction opportunities. For more information, visit: http://www.paladinassociatesinc.com/

About CombineNet

CombineNet, Inc. is the advanced sourcing technology company. CombineNet's ASAP product (Advanced Sourcing Application Platform) is an optimization-driven Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that helps customers deliver the absolute best total cost of goods and services based on their unique business needs.  CombineNet ASAP is used to speed, simplify, and centralize the sourcing of any and all spend categories from global suppliers. In the past 10 years, CombineNet has delivered more than $6 billion in bottom-line savings for businesses worldwide including General Mills, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Bayer, Sears, Johnson & Johnson, and many more across all industries.  For more information, visit www.combinenet.com.

SOURCE CombineNet