Imperial Sugar Recognized for Improving Supply Chain Efficiency
Through State-of-the-Art B2B Integration Solution
Dublin, Ohio – June 25, 2008 – Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) subsidiary, today announced that its customer Imperial Sugar Company, one of the nation’s largest processors and marketers of refined sugar, was selected by START-IT magazine as a winner of the 11th annual START-IT Technology & Business Awards. Imperial Sugar was recognized for its use of Gentran Integration Suite® (GIS) to enable greater visibility with partners and suppliers for strategic advantage. Imperial Sugar was able to cut the time to bring new customers online and improve its customer service process to be more efficient and cost-effective.
“Imperial Sugar markets on a national level. We were facing serious demands to conquer electronic data integration systems, integrate business processes and automate and streamline trading partner on-boarding and management while taking full advantage of integration technology (IT) assets already in place,” said George Muller, vice president and chief administration officer for Imperial Sugar Company. “This was no small task, but with the help of partners such as Sterling Commerce, we were able to successfully meet our goals.”
The START-IT magazine 2008 Technology & Business Awards were distributed June 24 at a ceremony in the Westin Chicago North Shore Hotel in Wheeling, Ill.
“This year’s Technology & Business Awards honor manufacturers that have made their businesses succeed through the use of leading-edge technology to overcome a challenge or solve a critical business issue,” said Peggy Smedley, editorial director of START-IT magazine. “We are pleased to honor Imperial Sugar and others for their outstanding successes.”
Imperial Sugar’s success is due in part to GIS, which offered an automated process that ran smoothly and complemented the company’s migration to a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. GIS now consolidates the flow of the company’s purchase orders across the enterprise to multiple back-end systems. Then it updates inventory and creates invoices directly from the new data. In addition, it securely exchanges multiple transaction sets with trading partners over the Internet and monitors transfers in real time. GIS’s ease of use and functionality enabled Imperial Sugar to convert approximately 150 customers to GIS quickly and helped reduce the cycle time of the entire supply chain process. It also enabled new transaction sets to trade information with third-party warehouses.
“I would like to acknowledge George Muller’s team and our Imperial associates who are the driving force behind this award-winning integration,” said John C. Sheptor, president and chief executive officer of Imperial Sugar. “Electronically linking Imperial’s ERP system to our customers’ IT infrastructure delivers greater insight into our business processes and ultimately improves our responsiveness to each customer’s specific requirements. With the new system in place we can rapidly assess customer needs, source the right product and ensure timely delivery—strategic advantages that make Imperial more agile and competitive.”
GIS capabilities include multi-enterprise business process management (BPM) for moving information flows across the most complex enterprises, with support for messages and files of all sizes, and more than 200 technology and application adapters. Multi-enterprise BPM capabilities also are incorporated for extending internal processes to customers, suppliers, financial institutions, distributors, logistics providers and other key partners. The suite is built on a multi-enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) that orchestrates processes and services across multiple domains and enterprises.
More information can be found on the START-IT magazine Web site: www.specialtypub.com/startit/.
About Imperial Sugar Company
Imperial Sugar Company is one of the largest processors and marketers of refined sugar in the United States to food manufacturers, retail grocers and foodservice distributors. The Company markets products nationally under the Imperial®, Dixie Crystals® and Holly® brands. For more information about Imperial Sugar, visit www.imperialsugar.com.
About Sterling Commerce
Sterling Commerce, a subsidiary of AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), has more than 30 years of leadership and expertise in helping FORTUNE 500® customers thrive in a global economy by optimizing the performance of their business communities. With nearly 30,000 customers worldwide, the company is one of the world’s largest providers of multi-enterprise collaboration solutions. Sterling Commerce has unparalleled experience in the retail, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare and telecommunications industries. For detailed, up-to-date information about Sterling Commerce and its solutions, visit www.sterlingcommerce.com.
For more information, contact:
Emily Hall, Sterling Commerce, (614) 790-8607, emily_hall@stercomm.com
Jamie Leicht, Fleishman-Hillard, (619) 237-7711, jamiemarie.leicht@fleishman.com