Event Report: Sterling Commerce Connection, Denver, CO

(Image courtesy of Sterling Commerce)

Sterling Commerce Pushes Closer to the Perfect Order
Sterling treated customers and prospects to a packed agenda of product announcements, customer case studies, and educational sessions at this year's customer conference. Here are a few quick observations from the event:

• Transformation from infrastructure supplier to solution provider near complete. Prior to the acquisition of Yantra in 2004, Sterling Commerce was known for its integration, data sync, and EDI capabilities for the supply chain. Through the successful integrations of additional specialist vendors such as Nistevo (2006) and Comergent (2007), Sterling Commerce continues to show progress in not only integrating but also extending its application capabilities in selling and fulfillment.
• New products focus on addressing the perfect order. Attendees continued to express their interest and desire to achieve the perfect order. Multi-channel capabilities and advanced order process functionality topped many conversations. Sterling's unveiled and showcased its new capabilities in inventory replenishment and new merchandising and marketing capabilities.
  
• Post merger integration with Comergent remains on track. Despite the departure of CTO, Bill York, key former Comergent executives such as Jean Kovacs and Andy Nicholas remain with significant management roles. Conversations with product team members and customers suggest that overall delivery on the integrated multi-channel selling and fulfillment appears to be ahead of schedule.
  
• Customers continue to displace existing systems. Conversations with over 23 customers indicate that many continue to choose a Sterling solution over their existing ERP or CRM provider. Of the 23 customers, 7 had Oracle, 11 had SAP, 2 had i2, and 2 had Click Commerce.

The bottom line:
As customers make the shift from functional centric to business process centric software, processes that support the perfect order (i.e. opportunity to order capture, order capture to order fulfillment, order fulfillment to order completion, and order completion to order settlement) will elevate in importance. Solutions that support the end to end order process across multiple channels will truly bring differentiation and strategic advantage to an enterprise. Sterling's focus in this area and continued execution along the late Sam Starr's strategy will bring this vendor closer to delivering the perfect order.

(The personal contents in this blog do not reflect the opinions, ideas, thoughts, points of view, and any other potential attribution of my current, past, or future employers.)
Copyrighted 2007 by R Wang. All rights reserved

Order Hubs: A Perfect Order's Just Really in the Eye of the Beholder

WHAT'S A PERFECT ORDER THEY ASK???

So I've been getting this question about once a week or so for the past 2 years. And basically, everyone starts the conversation from their perspective of what an order is. The supply chain guys think fulfilment, the CRM/eCommerce gals think order capture. and the ERP peeps think billing and payment. In fact, they are all correct! But let me suggest:

Take a process view first
However, you should take a process based view. This is about 4 key processes:

1. Opportunity to order capture - all the stuff to capture information for the order and send it on to the next step
   
2. Order capture to order fulfillment - the guts and logistics of fulfilling an order from pick,pack, ship to TMS, WMS.
   
3. Order fulfillment to order completion - the processes that may occur before an order is satisified such as returns, after market service, installation scheduling, and warranty claims.
   
4. Order completion to order settlement - invoicing, AP/AR, financial stuff.
   

Revisit what an order is really about
The basic notion is a stakeholder gets an order and they have their expectations to have this filled every time, without question and with minimal effort. Not the best definition, but when we drill further into major factors, it becomes apparent that there are about 10 key items to think about. A perfect order delivers:

1. The right product or service in the
   
2. The right quantity with
3. The right configuration that meets
4. The right levels of quality from
5. The right source delivered in
6. The right condition and packaging with
7. The right documentation in
8. The right period of time for
9. The right cost over
   
10. The right frequency
    

So, as you can imagine, there is such a thing as a perfect order, it's just in the eye of the beholder!

NOTE: Now I know others have had various versions of this and I do want to credit their work and especially Edward Marien at the University of Wisconsin who's talked about this for the past few years from a customer bill of rights perspective

(The personal contents in this blog do not reflect the opinions, ideas, thoughts, points of view, and any other potential attribution of my current, past, or future employers.)
Copyrighted 2007 by R Wang. All rights reserved