Supply Chain Visibility On Demand was announced during the National Retail Federation annual convention and exposition. The software solution provides connectivity, process integration, and real-time visibility throughout a company's extended supply chain, claims Sterling Commerce.
The business community talks about the “perfect order” says Richard Douglas, directory of industry marketing for Sterling. Delivering on-time, in full, and in the right condition is only part of the issue, he points out. Profit is the challenge, even on the perfect order. Warehouse management systems, transportation management systems, and order management systems can help with goals of reducing inventory, reducing operations expense, and reducing errors, he continues. But even with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in place, there is a struggle to keep up with the pace of change. Business agility and trading partner management are needed to supplement the benefits of other execution systems, and that requires visibility across a supply chain community Douglas describes as suppliers and customers, third party logistics providers (3PLs) and forwarders, contract manufacturers, and the financial side of the business.
Sterling claims over 19,000 customers on its Sterling Collaboration Network and more than 90 global network interconnects. This, says Douglas, allows immediate access to 270,000 unique trading entities around the globe. With the ability to collect data from these global sources in a variety of forms, Sterling Supply Chain Visibility On Demand and its Integrator products can help reduce the order-to-cash cycle.
Its cross-channel fulfillment solutions provide connectivity to an entire trading partner community, management of that changing and growing community, and visibility to manage multiple supply channels, says Sterling.
