Hiperos, LLC, a provider of on-demand solutions for extended enterprise management, announced on Thursday that Microsoft Corp. will use Hiperos to manage all critical aspects of the supplier lifecycle - from initial supplier registration and assessment of risk to active measurement of performance, monitoring of compliance, and maintenance of supplier information. It will also be used for governance and control of strategic relationships.

As Microsoft continues to build a world class procurement organization, this is an important milestone. During the past few years, under the leadership of Tim McBride, general manager and chief procurement officer, Microsoft has improved its strategic sourcing, enhanced its business and stakeholder relationship management, focused on relentless execution, and introduced a robust program infrastructure.

"In order to maintain a world-class procurement organization, it is critical to meet the changing requirements of internal stakeholders and external regulatory bodies," said Tim McBride, general manager and chief procurement officer at Microsoft. "Hiperos will play an important role in our achieving this goal. Hiperos delivers a truly unique and integrated supplier relationship management offering - one that will deliver a benefit to our suppliers and internal stakeholders alike. "

"We are proud of the confidence that Microsoft has in Hiperos," said Greg Dickinson, CEO of Hiperos. "After a comprehensive evaluation of our functionality, architecture, and security infrastructure, Microsoft trusted our cloud-based solution to replace important, off-the-shelf and homegrown, SRM applications. The result is that Microsoft will have access and visibility across a global supply base of more than 65,000 trading partners."

Dickinson added "Our use of Microsoft's development platform has absolutely contributed to our overall success. By using Microsoft technology, Hiperos has been able to deliver a cost-effective, secure, highly scalable, and flexible cloud-based solution."

Microsoft will initially use Hiperos to register suppliers, streamline AP processing, monitor data privacy risk, evaluate performance, track diversity status, and nominate companies to be part of the Microsoft Vendor Program (MSVP). The result will be a comprehensive, end to end solution for managing supplier risk, performance, information, and compliance.