Sterling Commerce, the multi-enterprise collaboration company and AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) subsidiary, today announced it will collaborate with IBM to deliver comprehensive retail industry solutions.
The first result of this collaboration is the delivery of the Sterling Commerce and IBM Consolidated Order and Inventory Management solution, which allows retailers to create competitive advantage and maximize profitable revenue by unifying their internal and supply chain community processes.
The Consolidated Order and Inventory Management solution leverages industry and technology expertise from both firms to enable retailers to differentiate themselves in the marketplace and gain rapid return on their information technology investments. Industry expertise, including deep retail industry expertise and knowledge of key multi-channel and supply chain processes, enables the solution to uniquely address retailer challenges. Technology expertise delivers an optimized services-based solution and includes the leadership role of both firms in the development and delivery of service-oriented architecture (SOA) technologies and solutions, Sterling Commerce's services-based and business process-centric applications, and IBM's unified, service-oriented multi-channel platform.
"Multi-channel is a strategic imperative for retailers who are seeking to harness new channels and touchpoints as a driver of growth," said Michael Ganci, Vice President, Distribution Sector at IBM. "IBM is focused on delivering industry-specific solutions that leverage best-of-breed technologies to help companies address their toughest business challenges. Our work with Sterling Commerce will help enable retailers to serve their customers as a single 'brand', regardless of what touchpoints or channels they use."
The Consolidated Order and Inventory Management solution enables a unified customer experience by spanning application and enterprise boundaries to combine fragmented financial, inventory, and logistics processes into a single, central view across all business units and channels. This delivers a high-level of customer satisfaction by:
- Capturing orders from all sales channels, such as Web, Catalog, In-Store, Call Center and EDI.
- Processing orders through the most cost-effective fulfillment channels, including identifying sources of supply such as internal warehouses or third-party suppliers, scheduling delivery and associated services, and executing fulfillment among internal participants.
"Our work with IBM is significant because the integrated platform we're offering brings together the pieces of the puzzle our customers have struggled with since moving to the multi-channel retailer model. It will enable retailers to provide a unified customer experience that allows customers to shop however, wherever and whenever they choose," said Cory Wiegert, Vice President of Global Product Management, Applications, for Sterling Commerce. "By providing an integrated, process-based solution for the complete order capture through delivery process, we enable retailers to reduce their order management costs and increase their ability to respond to business changes."