Sterling gives retailers two new solutions

Tuesday, 29 April 2008

Sterling Commerce delivers on cross-channel execution strategy with new supplier management solutions

Sterling Commerce has announced the availability of two new solutions to help retailers solve their supply-side challenges, Sterling Integrator Retail Edition and Sterling Supply Chain Visibility On Demand, a new Software as a Service. These solutions focus on the exchange and use of order and shipment information to reduce order-to-cash cycle time and are part of the company's vision to deliver a suite of solutions targeted at addressing the supply-side challenges.

Sterling Commerce is introducing Sterling Integrator Retail Edition and Sterling Supply Chain Visibility On Demand at the Extended Supply Chain Conference in London.

"At the Extended Supply Chain Conference this year, Sterling Commerce is raising the bar in delivering true cross-channel execution solutions for retailers," said David Hogg, retail industry executive, EMEA, for Sterling Commerce. "Not only are we the leaders in helping retailers provide a seamless cross-channel experience for the customer on the selling side, but we're going a step further to offer the industry's most robust solution set for the supplier world. This world is becoming more and more complex while also playing a bigger role in enabling retailers to deliver what their customers want."

Complexity in the supplier world comes from two opposing forces - more demanding customers and more distributed, extended supply chains. Increasingly, customers are demanding better access to information about the status of their orders. Retailers are hampered in providing this access because they have limited - or, at best, delayed - access to critical order and shipment status information on the supply-facing side of their business. In addition to affecting customer satisfaction, this limited access also can affect retailers' profitability by resulting in increased stock-outs or requiring retailers to carry excess stock to buffer risk or pay increased expediting costs to avoid stock-outs. Sterling Integrator Retail Edition and Sterling Supply Chain Visibility On Demand solve these problems through seamless inventory and order status connectivity.

Sterling Integrator Retail Edition electronically links retailers to more of their suppliers, carriers and other supply chain intermediaries to address this issue by providing reliable access to time-critical information. Sterling Integrator Retail Edition is an any-to-any integration gateway that accommodates any direct-connect data format exchange with suppliers. With improved access to this information, retailers are able to better manage several supplier processes, such as setting up merchandise SKUs, tracking order status and managing supplier performance.

Sterling Supply Chain Visibility On Demand, enables retailers to proactively respond to supply disruptions and improve market responsiveness by instantly displaying and summarising actionable supply chain information from all electronic trading partners and communities through a secure, reliable hosted infrastructure. It uses Sterling Commerce business-to-business integration expertise and its global supply chain community to maximise the number of supply chain partners with whom retailers do business. The return on investment from that integration is realised through lowered inventory carrying costs and improved operational efficiencies. [See related press release, "Sterling Commerce delivers SaaS Solution that transforms extended supply chain data into real-time actionable information."]

Sterling Integrator Retail Edition and Sterling Supply Chain Visibility On Demand are part of the company's vision of cross-channel fulfillment for retail. Sterling Commerce is delivering against this vision with its existing suite of selling and fulfillment applications, the new solutions announced today, and future offerings that, together, address the four components of cross-channel fulfillment:
• Connectivity to an entire trading partner community
• Management of that changing and growing community
• Visibility to manage multiple supply channels
• Orchestration of critical fulfillment business processes

Only Sterling Commerce brings together the power of community, internal and external integration, and cross-channel applications that are necessary to effectively address the visibility and management gaps on the supply-facing side of a retailer's business. The company's integration solutions connect suppliers, carriers and banks externally while also providing internal integration to fit into ERP or legacy/best-of-breed environments. It delivers the power of community through secure connectivity to any partner in any way, controlling community management and monitoring supplier/carrier performance. The company's best-of-breed supply chain fulfillment applications drive operational excellence by enhancing visibility, optimising execution, accelerating exception recovery and dramatically improving the management of inventory, transportation and distribution assets.

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