October 24, 2005

Last week, Sterling Commerce announced at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando its new B2B Multi-Enterprise Services Architecture that takes on supply chain functionality.

Visibility Manager, part of the Dublin, Ohio, company's Collaboration Network for business processes, lets users have better insight into transactions that IT systems perform with partners.

The software provides visibility into transactions at the process and document levels by capturing information as it flows through the Collaboration Network—from the point where that data is generated.

Using the data it has collected, Visibility Manager provides a single user interface whereby users can control each step in the order-to-invoice business process.

Visibility Manager uses a business rules modeler to set up actions that identify and help fix issues, and it creates automatic alerts to keep users informed of its progress. At the same time, users can create customized reports in Visibility Manager that track key performance indicators.

Visibility Manager is the first application to include supply chain functionality from Sterling's February acquisition of Yantra Corp.

It also represents a relatively new direction for the traditional EDI (electronic data interchange) vendor, which is moving into other application areas, Sterling CEO Sam Starr told eWEEK in a June interview.

Source: eWeek