Commerce Centre of Southern Africa, the e-commerce service provider in the Datacentrix group, has been appointed as a local distributor of the Gentran range of e-business software. The appointment has been made by Sterling Commerce, a member of the $50bn-a-year SBC Communications group. Commerce Centre is using the Gentran products to create e-marketplace solutions for customers in a broad cross-section of industries. It also offers an e-business integration service built on the suite, particularly for smaller companies that cannot afford the product. This creates the potential for 100% trading partner integration.
Nico Strydom, business development executive at Commerce Centre, says the Gentran product suite offers customers all the components they need to extend their business process to their trading partners over the Internet. "At least 60% of the transactions, processes and messages involved in business-to-business (B2B) commerce are not covered by current marketplaces, most of which focus on simple maintenance, repairs and operations (MRO) and commodities purchases. Gentran, on the other hand, is an electronic commerce messaging broker that makes use of a variety of standards.
"What companies need to experience the full benefits of B2B e-commerce is a solution that will allow them to automate all of the transactions involved in buying and selling goods right across the supply chain. This platform should also be able to communicate with business partners of all sizes, running a multitude of different systems," he adds.
The Gentran suite includes functionality for the generation and transfer of business documents such as purchase orders, invoices, advanced ship notices, and requests for quotations. In addition, the product set includes components for the secure exchange of data, documents and XML messages between enterprises. This functionality translates data and protocols on the fly to allow different systems to communicate seamlessly with one another.
Strydom says because of the current work being done on the National Product Catalogue (NPC), his company has a deep set of skills in the Gentran product range to offer the existing South African customer base. Commerce Centre has used the Sterling tools to build the electronic national product catalogue for the South African FMCG industry. This solution is hosted independently for the South African chapter of the EAN supply chain standards body.
Commerce Centre operates the local node of the global Sterling Commerce trading network, with the purpose of providing integration of trading partners. The Gentran integration solution, which has existed in various forms for more than 25 years, lies at the heart of this network.
In addition, Commerce Centre expects to announce some major e-marketplace initiatives based on Sterling technology in the agricultural, manufacturing and mining sectors in the next few weeks.
Sterling Commerce is one of the largest suppliers of e-marketplace software in the world, with its services and solutions in use at more than 50 000 companies.
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