Sterling Commerce tackles global fulfillment

In a crowded field, Sterling targets complex supply chains and multi-channel order fulfillment by combining EDI with both warehouse and transportation management tools.

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 6/19/2007

Why is Ma Bell interested in the supply chain business?

That was one response to the announcement two years ago that Sterling Commerce was buying Yantra. 

An AT&T subsidiary, Sterling focused on the movement of transaction data across companies or between trading partners, especially the movement of EDI files. No one gets their hands dirty moving data files. Yantra, meanwhile, worked down in the trenches where people do get their hands dirty with warehouse management (WMS) and transportation management (TMS) systems. 

The complex supply chain

Two things changed that made these marriage partners compatible, according to Joel Reed, Sterling’s vice president of global product marketing.

The first was that the supply chain has become much more complex. “You’re offering more products to your customers than ever, and you’re selling to them through more channels and with more partners than in the past,” says Reed. “On the supply side, your supply chain is extended because of off-shoring.”

The second is a direct result of the first. As supply and order fulfillment processes became more complex, the movement of information about products – think EDI – becames as important as the physical movement of those products – think WMS and TMS. 

“We realized that there was this gap in the market,” says Reed. “Typical ERP and supply chain execution solutions do well with producing the product and getting it into the warehouse. Where things break down is when you try to orchestrate the production and delivery of the order across this extended supply chain and multi-channel selling environment.”

WMS, TMS and EDI

To make all of that work, Sterling combined its legacy solutions for sharing data with WMS from Yantra and a TMS from Nistevo and geared it for the end user with a complex supply chain.

“If you have one manufacturing plant and a warehouse or two, you don’t need us,” says Reed. “If you’re sourcing off-shore; if you’re managing inventory for six or seven different businesses; if you’re doing final assembly, configuration and postponement processes in your DCs; or if you’re bringing the components together for an order from several different vendors that have to arrive together at your customer, that’s what we’re designed to do.” 

In addition to addressing the multi-channel manufacturing and distribution market, Sterling is also looking at providing more managed services to the market. Collaboration is one area, for instance.

“From our legacy in EDI, we can bring our customers’ trading partners into the automated world,” Reed says. “You may want everything as an EDI transfer, but you have 100 suppliers using everything from EDI to spreadsheets. We can present them with a Webform that allows them to input their information that we can turn into an EDI file for cost-effective, real-time information.”

Next up will be software as a service – providing its products as hosted solutions that are sold on a subscription basis. “Transportation management is already done that way,” says Reed. “By the end of the year, we will be offering our supply chain visibility tool as a service model, and then roll out additional products.”