Industrial supplier and engineering giant General Electric (GE) has announced the launch of ‘SourceNow’, a digital platform that reportedly provides a ‘one-stop-shop’ for industrial services.
The system creates a digital marketplace where buyers can float electronic requests for quotes to pre-qualified suppliers.
Around the world, the list of digitally-enabled organisations disrupting traditional business models is growing larger by the day, with one common goal – satisfying real market demands. SourceNow provides a similar breakthrough by offering a convenient platform that solves the challenge of sourcing highly-skilled and highly-specialised industrial services.
The system was developed by a small startup-concept team from GE’s Power Services Middle East and Africa (MEA) unit based in Dubai, UAE and is particularly useful for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that often have limited access to, or awareness of, high quality suppliers.
“SourceNow will change the way industrial services suppliers and customers do business. The large number of verified vendors and customer review ratings help to offer competitive prices and bring speed and efficient options to buyers,” Michelle Wu, CIO and VP of Digital Technology for Power Services MEA, has said.
“We have seen consumer goods industries use digital solutions to provide various scales of products, ranging from e-books to food service delivery. However, SourceNow provides services on a larger scale with simplicity and easy access to complex and sophisticated services in sectors such as power generation and oil and gas,” Wu was quoted as saying in a press release sent to arabianoilandgas.com
At the heart of SourceNow are three critical elements that have helped to create this digital marketplace that intends to connect suppliers to customers, while simplifying complex sourcing processes:
- Powered by Predix, GE’s platform for the Industrial Internet – purpose-built to meet the scale, complexity, speed and security requirements of industry.
- 125 years of GE’s industrial domain expertise in quality services.
- More than 110 years of GE’s industrial procurement and sourcing knowledge across the MEA region.
With over 430 registered industrial services suppliers, SourceNow currently offers more than 20 different categories of industrial services in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt. These categories include welding and fabrication, machining, EPCs, shop repairs, equipment rentals, manpower and much more.
“Looking at the broader picture, SourceNow builds on our commitment to help industrial services suppliers and SMEs grow faster. By connecting them and giving them easy access to each other, the digital solution can support their business objectives and speed up their decision-making processes,” Wu said of the system.
