MetLife Implements Online Procurement

Employees at Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. this week will begin purchasing office supplies online. The $27 billion insurer is the second-largest financial-services firm, after Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, to implement an online procurement initiative.

MetLife will begin rolling out the intranet E-Procurement application from Clarus Corp. to several thousand employees' PCs in multiple U.S. locations, with deployment scheduled for completion by year's end.

The New York insurance company will host the online catalog of supplier Boise Cascade Office Products on its Microsoft server and integrate procurement with its PeopleSoft human- resources and Geac accounts-payable applications. Purchase orders will be transmitted to Boise Cascade via MetLife's electronic data interchange networks, not the Internet. Says Mark Lowenthal, MetLife's director of IT services, "In order to meet our delivery date, we need to leverage the technology already in place."