Sterling Supply Chain Visibility enables hardware cooperative to maximise its supplier partnerships to enable members to increase revenues

Sterling Commerce, a subsidiary of AT&T Inc. has announced that Do it Best Corp., a full-line, member-owned distributor of hardware, lumber and building materials, has purchased the Sterling Supply Chain Visibility solution.  Sterling Supply Chain Visibility will enable Do it Best Corp. to better collaborate and partner with its suppliers.  Through improved insight into and performance from its suppliers and trucking fleet, Do it Best Corp. expects to:

Improve service to members through better fill rates and better utilisation of inventory assets;
Lower inventory investment through reduced safety-stock levels; and
Improve inbound transportation efficiency by monitoring on-time shipments and fill rates against order receipts. 

With more than 4,100 member-owned stores in the United States and across 45 other countries, Do it Best Corp. leverages it's buying power to enable members to get retail products at competitive prices.  The company uses technology to help optimise its supply chain operations to deliver added value to its members.  The implementation of Sterling Supply Chain Visibility supports this goal by providing:

Real-time visibility with suppliers and supply trading partners to increase data visibility and provide reconciliation capabilities; exception management across the Do it Best Corp. supply chain for its internal business units (members) and vendors to improve inventory allocation and reduce operational costs; and business process management to reduce manual processes after an electronic receipt of information.

"Do it Best Corp. has a long-standing history of strength and stability interlinked with industry-leading efficiency," said Kay Williams, vice president of Information Technology at Do it Best Corp.  "We are creating an agile information technology infrastructure that can adapt to change and leverage efficiencies and Sterling Supply Chain Visibility plays an important role in that infrastructure.  Its ability to help us, our members, and our suppliers get on the same page regarding supplier performance for fulfillment and shipping of orders is paramount to our success."  

The real-time visibility and exception management capabilities of Sterling Supply Chain Visibility will enable Do it Best Corp. to improve the management and monitoring of inbound inventory, purchase orders and shipments.  The Sterling Commerce solution also will enable the cooperative to implement supplier scorecarding best practices, including tracking vendor supply performance so expectations can be set, monitored and improved.  To create a continuous improvement process, information on supplier scorecarding will be on a supplier extranet for members and vendors to view. 

Sterling Supply Chain Visibility will integrate with existing Sterling Commerce business-to-business (B2B) communications solutions in place at Do it Best Corp. to further automate processes and improve supply chain visibility.  Do it Best Corp. uses Sterling Collaboration Network to communicate with their suppliers; Gentran Integration Suite to translate electronic data interchange (EDI) traffic as well as the integration layer for internal legacy integration and as the cooperative's AS2 communications hub; and Connect:Enterprise for ASYNC and BiSYNC communication.