Managing Automation - October 2007 - (Page 13)

spending by 21% and increased the number of software engineers on its payroll by 12%. The new Selling and Fulfillment Suite is the latest result of that R&D investment. The suite combines on top of a common services-oriented architecture supply chain management applications that Sterling obtained early last year through its acquisition of Yantra, transportation management applications that Sterling acquired in 2006 with Nistevo, and electronic commerce selling and marketing applications that the company added last year with its $155 million acquisition of Comergent Technologies Inc. The idea, Irwin says, is to allow Sterling to sell an integrated suite of applications covering an end-to-end business process to organizations that increasingly want to buy from fewer software vendors. “It also gives us an opportunity to present a single face to the customer rather than selling point products under different brands,” he says. “It’s a big shift for us.” So far, some Sterling customers, while noting the shift, have yet to sign up for the full Selling and Fulfillment Suite. Consumer electronics retailing giant Best Buy, for example, is using Sterling’s order management application as part of a major initiative to reengineer and unify its online and in-store selling and fulfillment processes, says Chap Achen, the company’s director of order management and credit risk. Best Buy, however, is using online order creation software from Sterling competitor ATG Technology Group and inventory replenishment applications from Oracle’s Retek unit. “Right now we’re not integrating around the Sterling suite, although, long term, we may do so,” Achen says. In the meantime, Sterling plans to extend the Selling and Fulfillment Suite in terms of both vertical industry focus and functionality. Like its larger competitors, Sterling must strive to develop among its employees rich vertical industry expertise into which customers, including manufacturers, can tap when deploying applications and reworking business processes, Irwin says. “We are going to differentiate based on a vertical industry orientation,” Irwin says. “Today, much of our process knowledge is horizontal.” In the next few weeks, Sterling will reorganize its marketing and sales groups around vertical industries. Irwin also plans to fill some gaps in the Selling and Fulfillment Suite. While the suite includes a transportation management module, for example, it lacks global trade management functionality, which is increasingly important to manufacturing companies sourcing and selling products outside the United States, Irwin notes. Sterling will seek to fill that gap most likely through acquisition rather than internal development, he says. “The acquisition route is obviously faster, and it gets you domain expertise,” Irwin says. While the enterprise software market has been consolidating for several years now, there are still plenty of attractive takeover targets out there, Irwin says, without identifying companies on his list. “It’s still very active without being out of control,” Irwin says. “Prices aren’t crazy. They’re high, but not out of control.” Scan S Back inMA MA OCTOBER 2006 tudies showed that manufacturers’ priorities had shifted from cost cutting to growth through new product development and market penetration. Recognizing that manufacturers couldn’t cut their way to success, MA put innovation under the microscope in a special series of articles that covered how and where to innovate in product design, production, sourcing and procurement, service, and support. MA OCTOBER 2002 COMTROL CLOSES BIZARRE CHAPTER INVOLVING FOUNDER hen Robert Beale, founder and CEO of network-enabling device provider Comtrol Corp., skipped a court hearing on tax evasion charges last year, he marked himself as a wanted man. He also gave the company he founded a fresh start, say those he left behind. By the time of the court date in August 2006, Beale had already sparred with authorities for a number of years over income tax assessments. Beale’s main contention was his residency status; because he claimed to live in Florida and not Comtrol’s home state of Minnesota, he said he was not subject to Minnesota taxes. When Beale failed to appear in court, “The Hennepin County [Minnesota] District Court issued an order removing Robert Beale from all of his offices with the company and directed Comtrol to hold an election for a newly reconstituted board of directors,” according to a company statement. The court also handed ownership of the company to Beale’s now former wife, Rebecca Beale. In the ensuing year, Comtrol created a board of directors that officials hope will spur growth. The Beales’ son, Bradford Beale, vice president of global sales at Comtrol, is the solitary Beale representative on the five-person board. He is joined by J.H. Caldwell, who has served as an executive at numerous companies, including Scout Information Service and Fourth M W icrosoft was integrating its recent acquisition, Navision, into the Microsoft Business Solutions Group, which itself had been formed following earlier acquisitions of bCentral and Great Plains. In this question-and-answer interview, Satya Nadella, corporate vice president in the Microsoft Business Solutions Group, discussed Microsoft’s small and mid-size business strategy and commitment as it stood on the threshold of the enterprise application market. M A O C TO B E R 19 9 7 T o stay competitive and to keep pace with customer demand, manufacturers were turning to technologies — such as bar coding, RFID tags, and handheld terminals — that could automate their data collection processes. MA explored the various technological options available. But even with automation tools at their disposal, manufacturers still faced the question of how best to control the data they were gathering. M A O C TO B E R 19 9 2 anufacturers were figuring out that networking the factory was much like networking an office, with a few variations. Accommodations had to be made for the harsher and noisier manufacturing environment, but otherwise the same technologies were applicable. The key was to eliminate islands of automation through integration. MA took a close look at such technologies and protocols as Ethernet, token ring, Fiber Distributed Data Interface, and asynchronous transfer mode. M 13 October 2007

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Managing Automation - October 2007

Contents Take 1 Mailbox New Selling and Fulfillment Product Leads Plan to Transform Sterling Commerce Comtrol Closes Bizarre Chapter Involving Founder New Omron COO Outlines Four-Part Growth Agenda New Mfg. ‘Czar’ Will Have a Full Plate of Issues Lawson Embraces The Trend of Fewer Upgrades Notes Wanted: A Unified Infrastructure Needed: Greater Reliability Special Report: Innovation: Why Are So Many Coming Up Short? Transforamation: Beating the Odds in Global Supply Industries: Metals: Tracking Carbon Footprints Product Scan Advertiser Index Next

Managing Automation - October 2007

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