Proformative Launches Enterprise Social Procurement Platform for the Office of the CFO

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Proformative, the pioneering leader in Enterprise Social Procurement™ for the office of the CFO, today announced the launch of Proformative Exchange™, a platform supporting the consideration and selection of high-value, complex products and services for senior corporate finance executives. Driven by objective subject matter expert insight and peer-based reviews, Exchange harnesses the experience and expertise of the largest online peer-to-peer community of CFOs and related finance professionals, boasting more than 500,000 unique visitors in the last year, as well as more than 60,000 users who have visited the site at least 25 times. 

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The input from community members—already familiar with the value of social and collaborative platforms such as Yelp, Amazon, LinkedIn, Jive, and Yammer—provided the initial catalyst for the creation of Exchange as a vehicle for collaborative online procurement decision making. Specifically, members wanted to leverage the insights of peers with direct experience with specific products and services in order to keep pace with the rapidly expanding catalogue of enterprise solutions in the marketplace. Collectively, the office of the CFO controls more than $2 trillion in annual core corporate spending on high dollar, complex purchases in the U.S. alone.

"Exchange is the next step in the evolution of our rapidly growing community and embodies Proformative's core values of trust and peer-to-peer knowledge sharing," explained company co-founder and CEO, John Kogan. "Because we were established by CFOs to serve CFOs, Proformative uniquely understands the mindset of senior corporate finance professionals."

In addition to providing an educational, user-friendly platform, Exchange facilitates informed decision-making through unbiased peer-to-peer reviews and insights in a trusted, "noise-free" environment. Today, Proformative Exchange features hundreds of reviews by corporate finance professionals on products and services important to the office of the CFO. Each review is thoroughly vetted to ensure they are free of any potential conflict of interest and authored by unbiased corporate finance, accounting, and related practitioners.

"I have no doubt that Proformative Exchange will take an increasingly prominent role in helping the office of the CFO make smarter, more informed purchasing decisions," said JDS Uniphase (JDSU) Executive Vice President and CFO Rex Jackson. "By combining a comprehensive directory of solution providers with vetted peer reviews, Proformative has done the heavy lifting to save finance teams an enormous amount of time."

Proformative Exchange features the ability to filter through a growing library of category-specific product attributes, enabling users to rapidly narrow their choices. Searchable feature examples range from project costing to multi-language functionality, in addition to other specifications, such as whether a solution is cloud-based or on-premise. This robust search capability allows users to research and evaluate options with unparalleled ease.

Industry-leading companies, such as NetSuite, Compuware and Host Analytics have already begun to endorse Exchange for its collaborative and open platform: "Proformative has filled a void in the marketplace by taking a leadership position in providing the CFO community with much-needed access to information about existing and emerging enterprise products and services," said NetSuite's Vice President of Global Marketing, Mini Peiris. "We're excited about the launch of Proformative Exchange and are confident that it will play a strong supporting role in driving future growth, as well as building the NetSuite brand in the eyes of this highly influential target audience."


"Proformative Exchange features a number of market differentiating attributes," commented Christine Dover, Research Director, IDC Enterprise Applications and Digital Commerce. "Leveraging the insights of a highly engaged user community of senior corporate finance professionals at its core, Exchange offers an impressive range of both enterprise products and services and thoroughly vetted peer reviews to ensure unbiased objectivity. It will prove to be a powerful and invaluable resource to the office of the CFO."

For more information and to use Proformative Exchange, please go to http://www.proformative.com/exchange.

About Proformative

The largest and fastest-growing online community and resource for the office of the CFO, Proformative is the pioneer in Enterprise Social Procurement™, a peer-driven community model enabling corporate finance professionals to make smarter, more informed purchasing decisions for complex enterprise products and services. Based in Silicon Valley, CA, Proformative reaches more than 600,000 corporate finance and related executives at companies ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 500 and is comprised of more than 35,000 community members.

Enterprise Social Procurement^TM and Proformative Exchange^TM are trademarks of Proformative.

SOURCE Proformative