ViewSonic gets clearer picture of business process management with Sterling Commerce integration suite
By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 8/1/2007 12:00:00 AM
ViewSonic has won numerous industry awards for its visual display products, which include plasma and LCD screens and monitors. But the Walnut, Calif.-based company, which recently announced plans to go public, would have difficulty selling those innovative products without the strong relationships it maintains with a global network of distributors and retailers.
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Jordan Beseiso, ViewSonic's manager of global business-to-business integration, says the company's adoption of the Gentran Integration Suite (GIS) from Sterling Commerce helps keep those relationships—as well as ViewSonic's balance sheet—intact.
The key feature of GIS, from Beseiso's perspective, is the centralized partner-management capability, which delivers a single interface for ViewSonic employees to monitor business processes and navigate reports and statistics in near-real time. It also offers insight as to where and how processes can be improved.
“The partner-management capabilities are important for us,” says Beseiso. “We add and execute key business processes while maintaining our existing staff levels. This allows creating new revenue opportunities without incurring additional resource expenses.”
These capabilities stem directly from Sterling Commerce's focus on inter-enterprise system interoperability, according to Russell Scherwin, director of global product marketing, B2B Solutions, with Sterling Commerce. In examining this issue, Scherwin says, Sterling Commerce recognized the need to accommodate various forms of communications formats and protocols, whether they encompass a highly sophisticated approach to IT, or a simple reliance on email with attached spreadsheets. It then created solutions—including GIS—to help manufacturers use IT systems to strategic advantage, he says.
“Leveraging IT strength enables a company to improve enterprise and supply chain performance by tightly integrating and monitoring key business processes,” Scherwin says.
Ken Vollmer, principal analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, says Sterling Commerce has improved GIS in recent years to meet manufacturers' demand for more integrated business solutions. “Today, [GIS] has a fully functional, integration-centric business process management suite that enables users to first set up, and then monitor, business processes,” Vollmer says.
What that means for ViewSonic is rather than focus on the underlying technology, it can tie different systems together, model processes, and focus on refining business issues, says Beseiso. That approach gives ViewSonic a competitive edge by offering customers—that global network of distributors and retailers—maximum flexibility when they place, check, or change orders.
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Russell Scherwin , a director for Sterling Commerce, says new centralized partner-management capabilities accommodate various forms of communications formats and protocols. |
For instance, GIS enabled ViewSonic to establish a fully automated order-to-cash process. The highly integrated supply chain allows near-real time purchase order modification, shipment notification, and electronic invoicing. When inventory requirements change or product lines shift, original purchase orders—and subsequent invoicing—can be modified to meet market demand while eliminating fragmented, data-transfer processes conducted via fax or email.
“It used to take months to meet electronic requests from major retailers,” Beseiso says. “Now we meet these requests in less than a week. In one case, we quickly met the electronic transaction demands of a new customer, and consequently secured millions of dollars in additional sales.”
