Datacentrix company Commerce Centre has launched Gentran Web Suite locally to fill the gap between electronic data interchange (EDI) and faxing. Gentran Web Suite, a Sterling Commerce product, helps small to medium enterprises (SMEs) use the Internet to extend an e-commerce infrastructure to their commerce partners.
Commerce Centre complements the Gentran Web Suite solution with a spectrum of e-business integration services for companies whose core focus is not IT, and who rely on fax or e-mail to transfer information to their businesses partners. Sterling Commerce is a member of the $50 billion per annum SBC Communications group, one of the largest suppliers of EDI and e-commerce software in the world, whose services and solutions are in use in more than 50 000 companies worldwide.
Browser-based Gentran Web Suite allows clients to use the Internet to automate the exchange of critical business data with internal and external business partners, regardless of their size or technical expertise. "We are aiming at that sector of the market that currently uses faxes to push orders, billing and other messages through to business partners," says Nico Strydom, business development executive at Commerce Centre.
Strydom notes that EDI was never fully embraced in most industry sectors in SA as it was viewed as too expensive, complex and time-consuming to implement. As a result, high-volume faxing continues to dominate the SME messaging market. Even large corporate players fax countless messages, which results in the receiving company having to manually recapture data. "Gentran Web Suite fills the gap between faxing and EDI and provides a growth path to full EDI to its users.
"From experience we have learnt that re-capturing of data is a very error-prone activity. As an example, if a business places 5 000 orders per month, 10% of those orders will have a material error, of which 70% will be from recapturing. The direct cost per instance of R75 to research and reconcile these errors is about R26 250. Because Web Suite removes recapturing from the equation, this is a month-on-month potential saving," he says.
Gentran Web Suite offers:
Automatic session recovery, encryption via SSL (secure sockets layer), comprehensive records of all events, and a transaction log capability.
Gentran Web Suite is also available as an extension for Gentran:Server for Windows NT and for Unix. Gentran:Server provides an intelligent messaging gateway for handling high-volume messaging (EDI, e-mail, e-fax, e-forms and technical data) in a distributed computing environment.
The inclusion of Web Data Exchange, an Internet file transfer component, allows clients to automate the transfer of data files in their trading communities, including the ability to send non-document type information such as CAD drawings and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets securely.
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