West Marine Selects MetricStream's Integrated Conflict Minerals Management Solution and Services

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- West Marine, Inc. (WMAR), a leading retailer of boating supplies and accessories, has selected MetricStream to provide a comprehensive conflict minerals software solution and a full range of services to enable and strengthen compliance with various conflict minerals reporting requirement in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

MetricStream supplier management experts will support West Marine throughout their entire conflict minerals management program -- from strategy workshops, to program implementation, survey execution, and reporting. MetricStream experts will also provide helpdesk services for supplier self-assessments and surveys, enabling West Marine to focus on strategic oversight and decision-making. The MetricStream software solution will provide a centralized framework to streamline and automate conflict minerals management workflows, and will enable real-time process tracking and traceability.

West Marine is a leading specialty retailer of boating supplies and accessories, with close to 300 stores across the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Canada. The company sells over 75,000 products, including the latest marine electronics, technical products, apparel, and footwear. In 2013, West Marine was named one of America's 100 most trustworthy companies by Forbes.

MetricStream will help West Marine build an effective conflict minerals management strategy and implementation plan, and will provide support through online help and training services. The MetricStream team worked with the West Marine Supplier Governance team through a workshop to establish supplier communication templates, protocols, and self-assessments and surveys to capture all conflict minerals related information such as smelter lists, country of origin of materials, and products that contain conflict minerals. Additionally, the team will manage the entire process of communicating surveys to suppliers and provide technical and support services.

The MetricStream solution will help import all supplier information into a centralized repository, and map it to internal business units for greater transparency in supplier relationship management. It will also provide complete and real-time visibility into supplier risk profiles, survey reports, supplier responses, communication trails, and the status of conflict minerals management, enabling West Marine to efficiently execute Form SD in compliance with Dodd-Frank Section 1502.

"Since the enactment of Dodd-Frank Section 1502 in 2012, many companies today are still unsure of how to develop and manage a reasonable country of origin inquiry across large and complex supply chains," said Gaurav Kapoor, Chief Operating Officer at MetricStream. He continued, "Our goal at MetricStream is to help companies understand how to create a conflict minerals management program, and also provide them with the domain expertise and technology to successfully build and manage this program, long-term."

MetricStream's conflict minerals software solution is a Zaplet application available on Zaplet.com, an open and flexible cloud platform and ecosystem for building and distributing specialized and niche GRC applications that address specific industry challenges. Zaplet leverages MetricStream GRC Platform as a service on the cloud and MetricStream Application Studio, a web-based development environment, enabling rapid development and deployment of GRC applications for specific risk management and regulatory compliance requirements.

About MetricStream

MetricStream is a market leader in Enterprise-wide Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC) and Quality Management Solutions for global corporations. MetricStream solutions are used by leading corporations such as UBS, P&G, Constellation Energy, Pfizer, Philips, BAE Systems, Twitter, SanDisk, Cummins and Sonic Automotive in diverse industries such as Financial Services, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Energy and Utilities, Food, Retail, CPG, Government, Hi-tech and Manufacturing to manage their risk management programs, quality processes, regulatory and industry-mandated compliance and corporate governance initiatives, as well as several million compliance professionals worldwide via the www.ComplianceOnline.com portal. MetricStream is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and can be reached at www.metricstream.com.