Tempe, AZ - February 18, 2002 - Lest the North America-centric among us
forget, it's a big world out there, and that means big opportunities for
supply chain software providers targeting customers in and out of the
Western Hemisphere.
Here's the latest deal announcements coming out of a cross-section of
solution providers:
LCD manufacturer Sharp Systems of America will use a B2B e-business platform
from Aqueduct, a provider of outsourced e-commerce services. Using the
platform, Sharp will be able to present its customers with storefronts
equipped with unique catalogs and individualized pricing established by
Sharp management using Aqueduct¹s client Web-enabled interface, ARCH
Control. The B2B platform gives Sharp business customers the capability to
conduct conventional online store functions in addition to the added
functionality of saving shopping carts for future use, retrieving former
carts and recalling carts for future purchases. Sharp Systems of America is
a division of Sharp Electronics Corp.
Tata Engineering & Locomotive Co., one of India's largest private sector
companies, has signed a new long-term agreement with e-sourcing services
provider FreeMarkets. Under the terms of the agreement, Tata Engineering
will use FreeMarkets' e-sourcing software and services to source various
goods for its global operations. The agreement follows the completion of a
pilot program begun in 2001. To date, Tata Engineering has sourced a variety
of automotive purchases through FreeMarkets, including development items in
a country-lead initiative. With a turnover of $1.6 billion, Tata
Engineering, part of Tata Group, is India's leading vehicle manufacturer and
one of the top ten manufacturers of commercial vehicles in the world.
eLSG.SkyChefs, a top technology and services supplier to the airline
catering industry, is implementing a host of solutions from software company
i2, including supplier relationship management (SRM), customer relationship
management (CRM) and content solutions. eLSG.SkyChefs uses i2 solutions to
provide online purchasing and order management of in-flight services and
catering equipment. With i2's SRM solution, eLSG.SkyChefs' marketplace
allows food service facilities and airlines to collaborate online for
strategic purchasing of contracted and non-contracted items such as dairy
products and beverages. i2 CRM is designed to streamline order management
transactions, which i2 says will help eLSG.SkyChefs' customers achieve
increased productivity and flexibility. Finally, the i2 Content solution
enables eLSG.SkyChefs to provide a common language for describing products
and services traded between customers and suppliers. eLSG.SkyChefs is a
wholly owned subsidiary of LSG Lufthansa Service Holding.
DHL Worldwide Express is set to streamline its pricing process using
software from solution provider Metreo. DHL will use Metreo's SR2 software,
a price planning-and-execution solution, to reduce the time necessary to
respond, produce and approve customer price quotes. DHL will be able to
access customer, services and pricing information at the time of
negotiation, recommend an optimal price and expedite an approved answer to
the field, thereby reducing response time and cost. Metreo says quotes that
took days or weeks to respond to can be handled in hours or minutes using
its solution.
The consumer division of heavy equipment manufacturer John Deere has signed
up with software company Planalytics to access Impact, an Internet-based
application that measures the specific effects of future weather on consumer
demand by product, location and time. Deere's Worldwide Commercial &
Consumer Equipment Division (C&CE) will use Impact LR to forecast demand and
plan production for lawn and garden tractors marketed in the United States.
Planalytics says that Impact LR provides retailers and manufacturers with
knowledge of how weather has and will influence their business up to one
year in advance in order to support more effective planning and forecasting,
product distribution and allocation, and advertising and promotion timing.
Riverside Distributors, the nation's top Christian products distributor, has
turned to software company Syngistix for a solution to help it more
efficiently distribute products to its customers throughout North America
and overseas. Riverside will use Syngistix's X!TE (pronounced "excite")
software for order management, inventory management, accounting, purchasing
and warehouse management. X!TE and e-Commerce, Syngistix' browser based
catalog and ordering application, provide Riverside's retail customers with
the ability to see the distributors full inventory of more than 100,000
Christian product stock-keeping units (SKUs) and immediately order
specifically what they need based upon the company's actual inventory.
NEC Corporation has tapped B2B integrator Viacore to manage the connectivity
and interoperability between NEC and several of its key component suppliers
in the Great China region, enabling visibility into automated supply chain
information. Initially, Viacore will configure NEC's Integration Utility
service to manage the production-level exchange of two RosettaNet partner
interface processes (PIPs) to improve demand planning and inventory
management. Following the successful completion of this initial phase, NEC
plans to increase the number of trading partners and PIPs, in order to
maximize the potential of its inter-company network. Viacore says that NEC
and its trading partners will benefit from the ability to share, in
real-time, information critical to effective demand planning, inventory
management and other supply-chain related functions.
BT Retail, the United Kingdom's largest communications service provider,
will use integration software and solutions from Vitria with an eye toward
improving customer service levels and reducing transactional costs with
suppliers. BT will use Vitria's BusinessWare to integrate processes and
applications across and beyond the enterprise to gain a view of its
collaborative supply chain and internal operation. BusinessWare will be
deployed as BT Retail's integration backbone to link processes involving,
for example, the CRM system, billing system, internal ledger and internal
product development system. By doing so, BusinessWare will help improve
customer service levels as well as streamline the numerous business
processes, making for a more efficient operation, Vitria says. BusinessWare
also will play a key part in BT Retail's developing B2B integration with its
suppliers to help streamline its supply chain and drive down the
transactional cost of trading. BT Retail is part of BT Group.
