Maximize Your Purchasing Power... "E-business is business. It's just more efficient." That's Bill Sullivan, CEO of SiteStuff speaking. SiteStuff, which is backed by Octane Ventures (CB Richard Ellis, Insignia Financial, Jones Lang LaSalle, and Trammell Crow), offers e-procurement services nationally. "In the current real estate environment, it's tough to grow gross revenues. But we can help you reduce your expenses by bringing transparency to the procurement process."

First, SiteStuff's online MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Operations) catalog lists thousands of products for sale to property owners. Second, it offers a bid management tool for the RFP process. And, third, it offers strategic consulting on the best way to aggregate buying power across your portfolio. Essentially, SiteStuff mediates transactions between vendors and property managers and takes a small spread on each item.

Sullivan states that SiteStuff has registered and trained 6,000 users managing 3,600 properties -- totaling 650-700 million square feet. Although SiteStuff takes ownership of products, it does not take physical possession of them. In fact, SiteStuff seeks to develop strong relationships between its vendors and customers. Each month SiteStuff processes over 9,000 purchase orders with about 25,000 line items.

According to Sullivan, the challenge to growing SiteStuff even faster is "change management." Sound familiar? We all like change as long as it doesn't affect us. Just kidding. Do you remember my quotation from The Nudist on the Late Shift, Po Bronson's book about Silicon Valley? "To sell software is to ask people to willfully become temporarily incompetent"? And isn't this true about any kind of change?

--Peter Pike