Houston December 4, 2001 Solution provider EC Outlook this week rolled out a new suite of collaboration tools and an update to its order management application.
EC Outlook said that its new C-Commerce Center provides a suite of collaborative value chain applications and B2B integration software that allow companies to manage and optimize multi-tier value chain relationships within their respective private trading networks. The solution provider said it has signed up Honeywell Specialty Materials to begin using the suite immediately.
The suite consists of two software products, including a set of collaborative value chain applications called Commerce Center. These applications are built to address such specific business needs as order management for buy side and sell side, order management for logistics, supplier-managed inventory, and shipment track and trace. Second, the suite includes a B2B integration platform called Collaboration Center that EC Outlook says will enable companies to establish multi-tier trading communities regardless of size, technical sophistication or existing infrastructure.
"The driving force behind EC Outlook's business model and new software is the notion that there is only one document standard, one communications interface and one data model that makes sense for conducting B2B commerce and that is the one that any given company already has in place," said Matthew Verghese, EC Outlook president and CEO. "Our software assumes the burden of accepting multiple standards, formats and communications interfaces so that our customers can rapidly deploy trading networks to an entire community of customers and suppliers, without requiring change."
EC Outlook also announced the availability of version 3.0 of its Order Management application suite. Order Management enables large companies to automate a range of buying and selling processes with suppliers, customers and other trading partners.
Order Management 3.0 provides organizations the ability to electronically exchange a range of commerce-related business documents, including purchase orders (POs), PO changes, PO acknowledgements, advance ship notices, invoices, goods receipts, credit memos, debit memos and other business critical documents. Organizations can also set business rules to govern trading activities, which EC Outlook says can eliminate errors and allow companies to avoid costly ordering mistakes.
EC Outlook says that companies using its order management applications have realized reductions in the cost of processing invoices, drops in customer service calls due to the elimination of lost invoices/invoice discrepancies, and a reduction in days payable outstanding.
Verghese said his company has had the opportunity, through its customers, to get a firsthand look at what makes successful private trading networks work. "From these unique experiences, we have created a more powerful set of tools for collaborative business relationship management that provides our customers with enhanced functionality and scalability for automating even the most complex trading relationships," Verghese said.
One such customer is DuPont Cyrel. "EC Outlook's collaborative business technology is allowing Dupont Cyrel to automate its entire trading process, creating new efficiencies throughout the trading network," said Christine Allison, Six Sigma Project leader for Dupont Cyrel. "The ability to electronically exchange critical business documents has strengthened our relationship with our trading community by providing them with a timely and accurate process from which to conduct business."
