Sales and fulfillment are two functions whose enabling software practically needs to have cloud-based flexibility because the needs i.e. orders and resulting shipments change quickly with a wide range of variability. And with the economy about to turn the corner, leading to more orders, yet with budget considerations still top of mind companies can ill-afford not to have right-sized-at-all-times solutions in place to handle load at least cost.
Sterling Commerce, an AT&T company, now offers just that by introducing 'as-a-Service' offerings of its Sterling Order Management and Sterling Multi-Channel Selling (MCS) solution, joining others in that environment. With these applications, the entire Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite, a collaborative supply chain solution for managing the entire inquiry-to-cash process, is now available in the cloud.
Sterling MCS allows companies to create a consistent, unified buying experience across all sales channels: mobile, web, store, contact center and field sales. Sterling Order Management orchestrates global order and service fulfillment to help companies improve cross-channel optimization and customer responsiveness. By offering these "solutions as-a-Service", Sterling Commerce enables companies it says to be more agile in capitalizing on the opportunities emerging in optimizing the inquiry-to-cash process, especially to address the peaks and valleys in the commerce cycle such as the holidays.
Delivering them is the Sterling Business Integration Suite a solution that handles B2B integration and secure managed file transfer in the cloud that helps companies reduce their IT burden and respond to customer and market demands more quickly. Currently, the company offers Sterling Collaboration Network, a hosted service that provides secure connectivity and collaboration between businesses, and Sterling Commerce B2B Managed Services, also in the cloud. Sterling Commerce Managed Services is a hosted B2B integration platform that takes responsibility for and provides on-demand access to the B2B infrastructure, business process visibility tools and community development resources.
Though roughly half of Sterling Commerce's solutions are already available in the cloud it is broadening deployment choices by making its cloud offerings more comprehensive across the entire product portfolio to enable it says fast deployment, lower startup costs, and reduced use of internal IT resources. The company has mitigated the barriers that have kept organizations from implementing cloud solutions that include security, privacy and availability through its proven ability to securely and rapidly deliver "as-a-Service offerings" to global companies.
Sterling Commerce's cloud strategy delivers two options:
--On-demand solutions are hosted by Sterling Commerce and enable customers to configure the solution to meet their specific business requirements and consume them on a pay-for-use basis, or subscription model
--Managed services solutions also are hosted by Sterling Commerce, but provide greater flexibility and control to the customer in how they extend and customize the solution and manage upgrades, availability and access to their users
A recent survey by Forrester Consulting commissioned by Sterling Commerce investigated options around deployment, pricing and functionality. The study, 'Driving Business Value Through Choice,' found that: "Today's landscape is heavily on-premises; 68 percent of firms use on-premises solutions exclusively for supply chain and/or integration. And fewer than half of firms said that deployment model made their top five selection criteria. But when asked about future plans, 63 percent of supply chain technology buyers and 64 percent of integration solutions purchases said they are likely to adopt SaaS in the future."
"While Sterling Commerce has been offering cloud-based solutions for more than a decade, more customers are now seeing the business benefit of implementing a cloud computing strategy that helps them optimize capabilities while managing cost," said Ken Ramoutar, vice president, Product and Industry Marketing, at Sterling Commerce. "Accordingly, we are expanding our offering to customers, giving them the broadest choice in how they define, deploy and extend our solutions to provide flexibility and the ability to quickly deliver ROI."