Expressive Commerce and Its Application to Sourcing: How We Conducted $35 Billion of Generalized Combinatorial Auctions

It combines the advantages of highly expressive human negotiation with the advantages of electronic reverse auctions. The idea is that supply and demand are expressed in drastically greater detail than in traditional electronic auctions and are algorithmically cleared. We have hosted $35 billion of sourcing using the technology and created $4.4 billion of hard-dollar savings plus numerous harder-to-quantify benefits. The suppliers also benefited by being able to express production efficiencies and creativity, and through exposure problem removal.