Stockholm, December 17, 2009 - Skanska, one of the world’s leading construction groups, has signed a five-year contract with IBX, the leading provider of services and solutions for efficient purchasing. The agreement includes electronic procurement and sourcing solutions for Skanska in Sweden, Finland and Norway.

The contract extends the existing business relationship between Skanska and IBX by an additional five years. Since 2004 Skanska has used IBX eProcurement platform to supply its construction sites with direct material and services in the Nordic countries. Seventy to eighty percent of Skanska’s annual turnover consists of purchased goods and services and the majority of the purchasing decisions are made locally at the thousands of different construction sites.

“After a tough start-up phase and a continuance improvement program our partnership with IBX has truly become a cornerstone in Skanska’s extensive purchasing transformation, generating business benefits for Skanska”, said Mikael Sjölund, Head of Framework Agreement at Skanska Nordic Procurement Unit. “Hence we feel confident in signing a new five-year contract with IBX.”

“When we started using the IBX eProcurement tools in 2004, our goal was to encourage the construction project managers to order goods and services through the system, thereby leveraging on our frame agreements. We have succeeded with that goal. The system handles a quarter of a million electronic purchases each year, ensuring the high quality of purchase material and reducing costs throughout the entire construction processes,” said Daniel Höglund, Process Manager at Skanska. “We are looking forward to entering a new phase in our partnership with IBX focusing on increasing the quality even further and adding more products and services to the system.”

The new contract contains IBX full eProcurement delivery with all related services plus eRequest and eSourcing. The IBX Catalogue provides the user with product information and the IBX Search Engine makes it easy for users to find products and services improving contract compliance. All software is delivered as a service (SaaS) for maximum scalability and rapid deployment.

Mark Masterson, IBX UK Country Manager said, “Skanska’s purchasing practice and eSourcing initiative is ground breaking in the construction industry and proves that successful eProcurement takes much more that technology. Skanska’s constant development of the catalogue content quality and the state of the art service desk drives the solution usage and increases contract compliance. We’re pleased to see that Skanska has benefitted from this project and plan to continue this project.”