| Abstract: | Companies will co-market complementary solutions for improved supply chain communication and product information management. |
| Keywords: | FullTilt, Inovis, PIM, product information management, supply chain communication, supply chain management, master data management, MDM, retail, EDI, electronic data interchange |
Supply chain communication product and service provider Inovis and product information management (PIM) vendor FullTilt Solutions last week announced a co-marketing partnership to boost the value of the solutions each company offers its customers.
Inovis's electronic data interchange (EDI) products aim to standardize, synchronize, and streamline communication in a customer's supply chain, with the goal of increasing the customer's percentage of perfect orders and expediting the order-to-payment lifecycle.
FullTilt's product information management (PIM) and master data management offerings provide a unified, comprehensive view of product data information across the supply chain by normalizing disparate data in a central repository.
According to FullTilt's chief executive Tim Wallace, the two companies hit each other's radar screens more or less simultaneously, and began discussing the possibility of a partnership late last year.
"It became apparent that Inovis had a fairly good synergistic product offering we could leverage into our account base, and vice versa," Wallace said in an interview today with Managing Automation.
The joint marketing partnership between Inovis and FullTilt will focus on opportunities in shared industries including the automotive aftermarket, CPG, retail, and high-tech electronics — verticals that have particularly heavy volumes of product data moving through their supply chains.
Many of Inovis's customers need to "take their data synchronization and data catalog requirements to the next level" by using PIM behind their firewalls as they push data through their supply chains, according to Wallace. That, he said, is where FullTilt comes in with its PIM solutions.
For its part, Inovis can provide software and services to assist FullTilt customers that have specific EDI requirements or are looking to increase collaboration in their supply chains.
As company officials described it, the partnership will involve FullTilt and Inovis bringing one another on board in certain deals where the other company can fill a gap.
Bill Swanton, vice president of research at AMR Research, said that there are two primary drivers behind this type of partnership. One is that retailers are trying to reduce the cost and time it takes to get new products on their shelves, a process that is hindered significantly by erroneous or slow-moving information.
The second driver is that in an effort to manage the receipt of electronic information from numerous suppliers, many large retailers are looking to centralized item data management systems for help.
Swanton said the partnership will enable FullTilt to tap into Inovis's large base of retail customers, where FullTilt's PIM software could prove attractive for managing and controlling data both internally and with suppliers. Inovis, meanwhile, wants to offer a simpler way for its smaller clients to realize the benefits of EDI while helping its larger clients reduce the cost and complexity of getting new supply chain partners up and running on the system. For this, FullTilt's PIM software would provide the data repository and manage the data flowing into the EDI system.
The partnership comes while FullTilt is riding high from record sales growth in 2006, including a 177% increase over 2005 revenue. Wallace said he expects 200-300% growth for 2007.
Privately held Inovis dates backs to 1983, when it began as Harbinger*EDI Services. Over two decades and many name and ownership changes, the company has built up a customer base of more than 20,000 customers across a range of markets and industries.
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