San Jose, CA Ñ March 3, 2003 Ñ SAQQARA Systems, a provider of product content and catalog management software and services, has released the latest version of its flagship CommerceSuite solution, adding new support for QuarkXPress and XML to make it easier for enterprises to distribute and reuse content from a centralized repository via multiple media.
With a variety of enterprise systems and applications consuming increasing amounts of content, SAQQARA offers solutions designed to make it easier and less expensive for companies to manage their content and catalogs and to make their unstructured content "transactionable," whether for a sell-side e-commerce system or for buy-side e-procurement or strategic sourcing applications.
SAQQARA said that CommerceSuite 4.5 provides a collaborative content authoring and publishing platform that supports multiple publishing vehicles to allow suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and industry exchanges to leverage product content across various mediums at a reduced cost.
Version 4.5 allows numerous users to alter content simultaneously and provides improved workflow and content control to enhance dynamic publishing capabilities, according to the solution provider. Users can tap a central repository of content to populate multiple online and corporate destinations, and the solution offers features intended to streamline the process to review, approve and release content for publication.
On the sell side, CommerceSuite 4.5 offers improved buyer recognition, security, analytics and up-sell and cross-selling capabilities intended to make online storefronts more effective selling tools. "Punchout" support enables companies to catch and service buying requests from market places, private exchanges and buyer managed e-procurement systems.
"Product information is a strategic asset, essential to the success of an enterprise's core processes," said Rick Collison, vice president of marketing at SAQQARA. "Efficient reuse of comprehensive, accurate and differentiating product information in a format that meets the unique needs of each customer, channel and internal group is essential for realizing the return on investment associated with e-business."
In the new version, integration to Quark Express via XML export enables the publishing from one database repository to various media. Leveraging a centralized product catalog, CommerceSuite 4.5 reuses the content in the master catalog Ñ thereby avoiding data duplication, as well as potentially increasing content accuracy and reducing the cost of going to print by simplifying the transition from traditional catalog layout to database publishing.
"CommerceSuite has always been good at bringing aggregated catalog or product information to the Web, and what we've now added is the ability to bring that to print by being able to export the content out of the master catalog and pour it into Quark style sheets and templates," Collison said.
Additionally, a custom XSLT simplifies mapping the XSD's to destination structures, tagging the catalog data with names that are familiar to a customers' QuarkXPress team, which can help accelerate use and adoption.
Version 4.5 uses standard XML methodologies to distribute and reuse content from the enterprise repository, and the updated version has expanded the ability to get data into and out of the master catalog, providing XML export of the entire product contents of the Web catalog. SAQQARA also has improved the capabilities to store product relationships and categories, and the new version adds the ability to import/export one product, one family or the entire catalog.
Other new features include the addition of "WorkFlow" capabilities, which allow distributed authoring across divisions, enabling numerous workgroups to simultaneously create, schedule, approve and publish product catalogs. "Change Packages" now show the status of the change package during all phases of a workflow, including creation, approval and publishing. Acting as a product manager for the Web site, it manages the process and identifies trouble spots prior to publishing. "Change Unit Details" include descriptive icons and provide more detailed information about each change unit. The "Publishing Results" log allows for selective deletion.
Finally, improved product relationships provide deeper support for linking related products, which can increase the ability for cross-sells, up-sells, related products and substitutions, and security performance improvements increase rules for access, which controls the quality of content by allowing only authorized users to view and make changes to data.
SAQQARA CommerceSuite 4.5 is available immediately.
