News Alert: Quixtar Extends Supply Chain Performance With webMethods
November 20 2006 - 8:50AM
PR Newswire (US)
Leading Online Retailer Leveraging Real-Time Access to Purchase
Order and Inventory Information to Enhance Supply Chain Operations.
FAIRFAX, Va., Nov. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- webMethods, Inc.
(NASDAQ:WEBM), a leading business integration and optimization
software company, today announced that http://www.quixtar-inc.com/
(Quixtar Inc.), a subsidiary of Alticor Inc., recently implemented
components of the webMethods Fabric(TM) product suite to improve
supply chain agility and performance. Quixtar is the industry's
20th largest online retailer and the overall leader within the
health and beauty category, according to Internet Retailer "Top 500
Guide" rankings. Quixtar is leveraging webMethods technology to
enable Web services-based interoperability between various
enterprise systems, which has allowed the company to seamlessly
update or replace a number of legacy systems as it fully
transitions to real-time operations of its supply chain. As a
result of these efforts, Quixtar is seeing significant improvements
in supply chain performance, including an improvement in inventory
turns and replenishment rates. "By minimizing our reliance on
legacy systems, we improved the timeliness and accuracy of our
supply chain while reducing the resource requirements that these
aging systems imposed on our IT department," said Tina Abdoo,
Integration Center Manager, Quixtar. "webMethods offered us a
real-time, scalable platform to which we could seamlessly
transition our supply chain operations. Due to its widespread
support for Web services, it's proven to be a very extensible
platform and enables us to address ancillary requirements such as
adding new vendors or products and easily deploying additional
functionality." While Quixtar's legacy purchasing and catalog
systems were critical to its operations, they were also limited by
inadequate integration. Specifically, these systems were costly to
maintain, difficult to update, and due to their failure to fully
integrate with the company's other enterprise systems, lacked the
speed and agility that Quixtar desired. As a result, the decision
was made to shift the company's procurement and planning operations
from its mainframe environment to its JD Edwards platform while
also adding real-time integration of its existing merchandising,
forecasting and planning applications as well. This necessitated a
new integration architecture. Leveraging the webMethods platform,
Quixtar was able to quickly integrate all of these systems into a
more holistic and seamless supply chain in which batch transfers
were replaced with real-time integration. At the same time,
webMethods was also used to create a number of customized
application interfaces, which provided users with role-based access
to a variety of applications as well as a more comprehensive view
of their operations. Since implementing webMethods, planners and
fulfillment teams have benefited from enhanced access to up-to-date
order information, including purchase order status, receipts and
inventory levels. On the business end, this has enabled the company
to more accurately forecast purchasing and inventory, as well as
build more accurate product plans. Additionally, this system has
streamlined procurement, enhanced vendor communications and
increased performance analysis. These enhancements have also
measurably improved Quixtar's ability to respond to emerging
opportunities. For example, products may now be setup and orders
placed to suppliers on the same day. This allows Quixtar to more
quickly capitalize on key buying trends. "The existing legacy
purchasing system was not optimal and did not provide the
flexibility to quickly setup products and purchase orders," said
Rick Townshend, Quixtar's Finance & Product Systems Manager.
"By eliminating our reliance on this legacy system, we
significantly improved the timeliness and accuracy of our ordering
information, and reduce the resource requirements that the aging
system imposed on the IT staff." As well as reducing the resources
required to setup new products, the IT team received significant
benefits from the re-use of Web services across implementations.
Using the webMethods platform to create a more consolidated supply
chain infrastructure also allowed Quixtar to reduce application
redundancy as well as its reliance on more costly mainframe
systems, which further enhanced the productivity and efficiency of
its IT operations. "End-to-end operational visibility and process
adaptability are both critical components of best-in-class supply
chain performance," said Deborah Rosen, executive vide president,
worldwide marketing, webMethods, Inc. "Through the real-time
integration that we offer as well as the enhanced agility enabled
by our widespread support for Web services, we're helping to make
this objective a reality for Quixtar." About Quixtar Quixtar Inc.,
a subsidiary of Alticor Inc. based near Grand Rapids, Mich., is a
business opportunity company that offers entrepreneurs the ability
to have a web-based business of their own. Through Quixtar's
Independent Business Ownership Plan, individuals in the U.S. and
Canada are rewarded for product sales resulting from their
business-building efforts. Since 1999, Independent Business Owners
powered by http://www.quixtar.com/ (Quixtar) have generated more
than $5.7 billion in sales, earning in excess of $1.7 billion in
bonuses and other incentives. Their efforts have made Quixtar the
number one retailer in the online Health & Beauty category
based on sales, according to Internet Retailer's "Top 500 Guide."
About webMethods, Inc. webMethods (NASDAQ:WEBM) provides business
integration software to integrate, assemble and optimize available
IT assets to drive business process productivity. webMethods
delivers an innovative, enterprise-class business integration
platform that incorporates proven integration technology with next
generation capabilities into one interoperable set of tools that
delivers a unique combination of efficiency, agility and control.
webMethods combines industry leadership with a zealous commitment
to customers to deliver tangible business value to approximately
1,400 global customers. webMethods is headquartered in Fairfax,
Va., with offices throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia Pacific and
Japan. More information about the company can be found at
http://www.webmethods.com/. The webMethods name and logo are
registered trademarks of, and webMethods Fabric is a trademark of,
webMethods, Inc. All other marks mentioned are trademarks or
service marks of their respective companies. DATASOURCE:
webMethods, Inc. CONTACT: John Conley of webMethods,
+1-703-460-5996, Web site: http://www.webmethods.com/
http://www.quixtar-inc.com/
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