Driven by Enterprise Customer Demand, Latest Services Procurement and Management Release Enhances Support for Mission-Critical Services and Global Deployments.

Sunnyvale, CA, June 3, 2004 - Elance, Inc, the leading provider of software solutions for Services Procurement and Management (SPM), today announced availability of Elance SPM 4.5, the latest version of its integrated services procurement suite that improves the way organizations buy and manage services - one of the largest and fastest growing components of corporate spending. In particular, this release includes new capabilities that strengthen Elance's support for global deployments and mission critical services such as research and development, marketing and asset maintenance.

Built in partnership with leading Global 500 companies, the new features in Elance SPM 4.5 are designed to drive further reductions in spend, increase use of preferred suppliers, ensure that services are purchased in accordance with corporate guidelines, monitor supplier performance and streamline processes. The enhancements in Elance SPM 4.5 will enable customers to realize even greater levels of savings beyond the multi-million dollar savings reported by one customer and the 17% reduction in services spend cited by another.

"Services procurement applications can have a real effect on the bottom line, both for buying companies and services suppliers," wrote Andrew Bartels, vice president of Forrester Research. In his April 2004 report, "Services Procurement needs Executive Sponsorship to Achieve its Potential," he adds that "Elance has the most advanced services procurement product in terms of coverage, supporting both discrete and ongoing service relationships, as well as time-, deliverable-, and units-and-materials-based services engagements."

"Elance defined the services procurement and management space three years ago," said Fabio Rosati, president and CEO of Elance. "Since then, many of the world's most successful companies have deployed our solution, saving millions of dollars and systematically increasing the quality of services purchased. We are now redefining the industry by partnering with these customers to achieve their sales and profit objectives through better management of their most strategic service providers."

Enhanced Support for Mission Critical Services Delivers Revenue and Cost Benefits
Elance's strategy of delivering a platform for managing a wide range of services has long been a key to the company's success. In partnership with some of the world's leading companies, Elance is furthering its investment in strategic or mission critical services that are fundamental to the success and profitability of its customers. Examples of mission critical services span every industry. For example, retail financial services companies rely on successful collaboration with marketing firms and print shops to design and execute marketing campaigns as a primary driver of new business. In contrast, energy, utility, and chemicals providers have multi-million dollar assets such as power generation facilities and electric distribution networks that require rapid maintenance services to ensure uptime, minimizing costs and maximizing revenues.

In support of this strategy, Elance has enhanced its support for a wide range of strategic outsourced services, including marketing, advertising, print, asset maintenance, research and development, consulting and contingent staffing.

Enhanced Global Deployment Capabilities Reduce Time To Value
In response to demand from a customer base that includes a Fortune 10 diversified manufacturing company, a Fortune 100 high-tech manufacturer and a Fortune 200 financial services company, Elance SPM 4.5 provides a common platform not only for multiple service categories but also multiple business units across the globe. Elance SPM 4.5 delivers new functionality for purchasing services in multiple currencies, for viewing services procurement and management data partitioned by country or locale as needed, and for supporting local requirements such as VAT calculations, and country specific overtime and co-employment regulations. As a result, multi-national enterprises can quickly expand their services procurement and management strategies worldwide while tailoring the user experience by division or business unit, increasing cost savings and compliance with corporate policies, dramatically reducing the time to value in each additional country.

New Features Deliver Further Cost Savings and Increased Quality Across All Service Categories
Already the first to provide a single platform to manage a wide variety of service categories, Elance SPM 4.5 is delivering significant functional enhancements to drive further benefits across order types, service categories and business units. As a result, companies can better track and manage services to improve time to market and increase the quality of services purchased while lowering the cost of services across all service categories

• Marketing Campaign & Program Management - Marketing programs are typically complex projects spanning numerous employees and external service providers. Elance allows an organization to define projects, assign and track activities, post project components for competitive bidding, and manage and monitor budgets at the campaign and sub-project level. The programs can be copied and re-used allowing for the rapid and widespread deployment of proven campaigns and promotional offers in a consistent and cost effective manner.
  
  
• Order Specification & Supplier Collaboration - Many service orders require extended collaboration with suppliers before the order can be finalized. Print services are an excellent example of a complex service, often with over 50 different attributes for a single print job, many of which cannot be specified by the buyer alone. Using Elance, buyers can establish the key attributes of a service order and then allow each potential service provider to propose the remaining aspects of the job. From there, buyers and suppliers can iterate together on the final project design in a streamlined and fully documented manner, resulting in increased visibility into campaign costs and supplier performance.
  
  
• Complex Pay Rate Structures and Formulas - Contingent labor pay rates can be very complex to calculate, depending on the service performed, the location of the service and various government and industry requirements. Elance SPM 4.5 includes several new pay rate features, including tenure-based discounts, flexible workweek definitions, and temporary agency markup formulas. Regardless of the complexity of the pay rate or supplier markup, Elance ensures competitive pricing on all service orders by enforcing the rates already established in the master agreement.
  
  
• External Workforce Management - In today's fiscally conservative and risk averse environment, it is critical to understand who has access at every facility. This includes contractors, consultants, supplier service providers and all other non-employee personnel onsite. Elance provides a central repository to manage, track and provide facility access for all external workers. Elance fully automates the on-boarding process for these workers to ensure background checks are performed, equipment is provided and tracked, and badge and plant security systems know exactly when and where external workers should have access. As a result, management can see, with the push of a button, exactly how many and which external workers have access at every location.

About Elance, Inc.
Elance is the leading provider of software solutions for Services Procurement and Management (SPM) that improve the way organizations buy and manage services - one of the largest components of corporate spending. With the Elance SPM 4 application suite, large organizations can gain visibility into services spend and performance, establish and control enterprise processes, and achieve 10-20% hard cost savings across a broad range of external service categories. Elance also provides the Elance Onlineô services marketplace, the leading Web-based project marketplace that connects small- and medium-sized businesses with a global pool of high-quality service providers. For more information on Elance, please call 650-316-7500 or visit www.elance.com.

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Elance, Elance SPM 4 and Elance Online are trademarks or registered trademarks of Elance, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

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