Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc (NYSE: T) company, today announced that it witnessed record growth during 2008 for its Business-to-Business (B2B) services.
Designed to help companies excel at B2B integration, the Sterling Collaboration Network and Sterling Commerce Managed Services celebrated over 30 customer wins in 2008 including, Carrefour France, Geodis, System U, Yvon Mau, H.J. Heinz, Choices, American Standard Europe BVBA, Luxottica S.p.A, Birds Eye Iglo Group and Campbell's France.
In a recent study [1] conducted on behalf of Sterling Commerce, four out of five companies across France, Germany and the UK said they were experiencing problems with their current B2B capabilities. With the economic downturn amplifying the need for companies to strengthen B2B integration whilst holding on to capital, Sterling Commerce expects managed services to continue to grow during 2009.
The biggest European growth of B2B services in 2008 was seen in France, particularly across retail, consumer packaged goods (CPG) and logistics companies. Growth in these industries was replicated across Europe as companies look to reduce the total cost of ownership of their B2B operations and accelerate business collaboration with customers and partners.
One of the ways to retain a competitive advantage and focus on core capabilities is to drive efficiencies across the 'business collaboration network'. According to a Gartner report; "Between 2007 and 2012...Global 2000 companies (will) at least double their multi-enterprise traffic (transactions, documents and process execution events)."
The report added, "One key driver for revenue growth of multi-enterprise/B2B infrastructure technologies will be that mid-size to large businesses will need to implement different styles of multi-enterprise collaboration to meet diverse external partner requirements." [2]
Dave Carmichael, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sterling Commerce comments, "Creating efficiency in the supply chain is always a focus for companies and in today's economic climate even more so. This has led many to tuturn to B2B managed services and look at the economies of scale that can be achieved using On-Demand integration platforms.
"With the financial stability provided by our parent company, AT&T, we have the ability to invest in capabilities even during an economic downturn. This, in addition to our proven multi-tenant platform, which is built upon our own market-leading integration software and network, makes us a viable and secure global partner for our customers," Dave continued.
To aid companies achieve seamless internal and B2B systems integration, Sterling Commerce today launches the first in a series of video Guides to Business Integration.
In 2008, Sterling Commerce extended its Best-in-Class capabilities of Sterling Commerce Managed Services; and announced the availability of Sterling Collaboration Network in Australia, China, and Japan. The company also completed a $16 million data centre project, leveraging more than 27,000 man hours to create a secure and scalable multi-tenancy B2B environment.
[1] Study took place in January 2009 across 300 respondents and was conducted by Vanson Bourne
[2] Market Trends: Multienterprise/B2B Infrastructure Market, Worldwide, 2008," by Fabrizio Biscotti et al, March 10, 2008