January 19, 2005

Automotive parts and accessories company JC Whitney just scrapped an old legacy system over 35 years old, in favor of a new B2B application that brings together order management, customer service and inventory functions on the same transactional platform. CommercialWare designed a solution called 'CWDirect for JC Whitney' that runs on top of the company's existing IBM infrastructure, which includes a DB2 database, WebSphere Commerce and the IBM eServer iSeries.

The main problem with the old system is that it did not connect orders directly to the inventory system, a situation that created some turbulence for customers. Now, says Marty Werhle, CIO of JC Whitney, orders are not only connected to inventory (visibility that lets the company cut down on stockouts as well as calibrate the supply chain to actual demand) but also "transferred to all of our internal support systems in an online real-time mode.

This gives us immediate visibility into the order so our customer service representatives can see that order as it occurs and the customer who's ordering on the Internet can be informed as to what the inventory status is of that order." Consequently, the customer can get a real-time e-mail confirmation.

The interaction of orders, inventory, and customer services is the heart of the system but, in order to make it a true system of record, JC Whitney made sure that it would also be connected to the company's warehouse management system (WMS), financials, and various reporting systems.

Article by: Demir Barlas,
Source: Line 56