MRO Software, with its flagship MRO.com Web site, forged alliances recently with Prelude Systems and EssentiaLink to provide distributors more e-procurement and e-commerce services.

MRO Software is an e-commerce solutions provider for maintenance, repair and operations distributors. The company consists of MAXIMO®, its demand-side plant software, and MRO.com, a supply-side suite of hosted B2B solutions for distribution.

Prelude Systems provides solutions for integration and process automation of high-volume industrial distributors.

"Together with MRO software, Prelude Systems will promote real-time communications across the supply chain by offering XML transactions to provide continuous interactions between manufacturing plants and the MRO supplier's inventory system," says Don Webb, president of Prelude Systems.

Integration being a key in commerce, electronic and otherwise, MRO Software is planning catalogs for each distributor while opening the vertical marketplace to more customers. Demand-side, supply-side, e-commerce integration and EssentiaLink's systems that enable industrial goods procurement combine the four major factors for conducting e-commerce for any distributor, according to both companies. MRO Software expects to be one source for all four parts of the e-commerce puzzle.

"Each distributor will have a personalized, individual catalog to display their products, making it a win-win situation. Customers will have a larger base of distributors to choose from, and distributors stand to gain new customers," says Andrew Moore, vice president of alliances and business development for MRO Software.

"This marks a major advance in supply chain integration ... our customers are able to have one connection to all customers everywhere," Webb said.

Distributor services will include EssentiaLink's turnkey Supply Chain Solution?, mroDistributor by MRO Software, which enables electronic catalogs, and MRO.com, a hosted buying and selling software service for distributors and manufacturers. Prelude Systems will also integrate its Consortia Connectivity, a marketplace gateway, with mroDistributor.