Santa Clara, CA December 19, 2002 Computer Sciences Corp. has tapped software from solution provider Cardonet to streamline the management of product information used in CSC's information technology outsourcing business.
One of the world's largest IT services companies, $11.4 billion CSC is deploying Cardonet's Product Master software and Transactive Catalog solution in order to build and maintain an efficient and flexible "discovery environment," which will be used by BAE SYSTEMS for ordering IT supplies and services.
"The Cardonet solution enables us to seamlessly integrate the ordering of IT products and services with our customer's existing business processes in a manner that is both scalable and cost effective," said Fergus Quinn, CSC program director for BAE SYSTEMS.
According to Quinn, CSC selected the Cardonet software because the software's self-service portal and automated workflow enable CSC to quickly and efficiently aggregate product information from a range of manufacturers and distributors, then combine that data with information about CSC's own IT services offerings.
The software's rules-driven capabilities automatically validate, normalize and categorize incoming data before passing it to an "authoring" environment where CSC personnel inspect and supplement the data, filling in missing information and creating various "bundles" of equipment and services to simplify the ordering process.
After that, the approved data is automatically loaded to the Cardonet Transactive Catalog to allow authorized BAE SYSTEMS users to search and select products in an integrated fashion. The software uses a "round trip" protocol to enable BAE SYSTEMS users to browse the catalog and place orders from their Commerce One e-procurement system. Approved orders are dispatched to CSC's order management system via the Exostar market site.
"Product information continues to be a vital ingredient in most business relationships, and this case illustrates the importance of having a strategy for managing product information that is both comprehensive and flexible," said Itay Meiri, CEO and founder of Cardonet. "CSC's selection of Cardonet reflects our emphasis on process automation and on our configurability to customer-specific workflows."
