Ketera, the leading On Demand Spend Management provider, and Asplundh Tree Expert Co., a leading provider of vegetation management and utility services, today announced plans to use Ketera’s Spend Management solution as part of Asplundh’s ongoing efforts to improve productivity and profitability. Asplundh will use several applications from the Ketera web-based suite to strengthen spend management and analysis, as part of a strategy to improve operational efficiencies in its procurement processes.

Asplundh Procurement Services Director Scott A. Lambrecht says the company is continuously looking for ways to drive increased efficiencies throughout its operations while providing customers with the quality services they have come to expect.

“Through our relationship with Ketera, we now have access to on demand technology that will enable us to better analyze spending trends and establish spend intelligence best practices to help us improve bottom-line results,” Lambrecht says.

Asplundh will use Ketera Spend Analysis, an on demand, web-based spend processing and spend intelligence solution, to gain visibility into its indirect expenditures across categories and to identify areas to consolidate spending with preferred vendors -- ensuring financial transparency, reduced risk and greater purchasing power.

Ketera Spend Analysis helps customers access, organize and analyze spend data on both goods and services. After the completion of spend analysis using the Ketera solution, companies have a clear and complete understanding of their corporate expenditures across various dimensions and with increasing levels of detail - an essential component for reconciling costs and identifying areas for improvement. The Ketera Spend Analysis solution also provides low-cost Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integration, allowing companies to further increase return on investment, as well access to the company’s rapidly growing community of buyers and suppliers.

Ketera Chairman and CEO Steve Savignano says that in this challenging economic climate more and more companies are turning to Ketera to understand and gain control of their corporate spend and achieve savings as never before. “Identifying spend is the first step toward controlling the entire spend management cycle and Asplundh demonstrates its thought leadership by automating this core business process. Today’s announcement further validates Ketera’s vision for changing the economics of spend management by offering these capabilities in a Software as a Service model and demonstrates that companies of all types and sizes can use this new class of tools to improve their bottom line,” Savignano says.

About Ketera

Ketera is the leading provider of On Demand Spend Management solutions. The company's groundbreaking vision and Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings are changing the economics of spend management, enabling businesses to control and reduce corporate spending as well as access the world's fastest growing community of buyers and suppliers. Ketera provides a complete suite of applications, services and community networks for spend analysis, sourcing, contract management, procurement, supplier enablement & content management, supplier performance management, and invoice management.

Since its inception, Ketera has supported enterprise customers of all sizes, industries and geographies, including numerous Fortune 500 companies. In 2007, Ketera surpassed $17 trillion in spend analyzed and more than $3 billion in transactions processed between buyers and suppliers. Many of the world’s leading enterprise companies, including ServiceMaster, American Express, Kennametal, Con-way, and Northrop Grumman Corporation, depend on Ketera Spend Management to deliver real, hard-dollar savings quickly.

Ketera’s investors include Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Emergence Capital Partners, Foundation Capital, Integral Capital Partners, Concentric Equity Partners, Duff, Ackerman and Goodrich (DAG) Ventures and Teachers’ Private Capital.

For more information about Ketera and the Ketera Spend Management suite of services, please visit: http://www.ketera.com.

About Asplundh

Asplundh Tree Expert Co. is a family-owned and managed vegetation management and utility services company headquartered just outside of Philadelphia in Willow Grove, PA. It primarily provides line clearance and herbicide application services to utilities and municipalities. While vegetation management is Asplundh’s primary focus, a wide variety of other utility-related services are offered by its sister company, UtiliCon Solutions, Ltd. These include overhead and underground line construction, pole maintenance, infrared inspection, meter installation and reading, street and traffic signal construction and maintenance, one-call center operation and disaster debris removal. The Asplundh family of companies employs approximately 28,000 men and women throughout the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. For more information, please visit http://www.asplundh.com.