WebSphere Commerce Family

The WebSphere Commerce and Sterling Commerce Multi-Channel Order Management Integration kit is a collaborative development project between IBM and Sterling Commerce to provide two-way integration between IBM's WebSphere Commerce version 6 and the Sterling Commerce Multi-Channel Order Management solution. The combined solution enables a unified customer experience by spanning application and enterprise boundaries to combine fragmented financial, inventory, and logistics processes into a single, central view across all business units and channels. This delivers a high-level of customer satisfaction by combining:

• WebSphere Commerce's capture of orders across various channels, including the web channel (customer or customer service representative) and the call center channel.

• Orchestration of order processing by Sterling Commerce Multi-Channel Order Management to choose the most cost-effective fulfillment channels. The selection process includes identifying sources of supply such as internal warehouses or third-party suppliers, scheduling delivery and associated services, and executing fulfillment.

Together with IBM, Sterling Commerce has developed a standard Integration Kit and Reference Application, based on Web services, which integrate WebSphere Commerce V6 with the Sterling Commerce Multi-Channel Order Management solution. Business processes for order capture, order search, order history and order modification have been provided as part of the reference integration.

The Sterling Commerce technology architecture is aligned with IBM's strategic direction, and is ahead of most ISV partners in its support of IBM platforms. Sterling Commerce has achieved certification status in IBM's SOA program.

The Sterling Commerce architecture features:

- Standards based, Net-native service oriented architecture compatible with:

• Java - J2EE

• Native XML

• SOAP, WSDL

- Applications certified on multiple IBM software and hardware platforms to enable a full-stack solution for IBM infrastructure, including:

• pSeries and xSeries (eServer Certified)

• AIX, Linux

• WebSphere Application Server and MQ support

• DB2 / UDB

• SOA certification

• Store Integration Framework certification

• Proven system storage

When you deploy IBM WebSphere Commerce and Sterling Multi-Channel Order Management together, you get capabilities that lead the industry in order capture and order fulfillment without the pain of integrating them. The Integration Kit accelerates the return on investment by getting you into production faster.

This solution uses Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) (link resides outside of ibm.com) to provide industry-leading technology for order capture and complex order-management problems. IBM's WebSphere Commerce and Sterling's Multi-Channel Order Management Solution reduces time to market as well as total cost of ownership because of the flexibility SOA provides. And by automating the orchestration of order fulfillment across multiple channels, you can offer your customers greater flexibility with less cost to you.

Intended Customers

The IBM WebSphere Commerce/Sterling Multi-Channel Order Management integration is perfect for:

• Retailers

• Distributors

• Manufacturers

• Logistics Providers

Traditional applications address fulfillment within the four walls of a company - focusing on the products, inventory and processes owned by the enterprise. As fulfillment extends beyond the enterprise and across multiple channels, failure to manage and monitor fulfillment in the extended supply chain results in lost orders, increased inventory, highly manual order processing and declining customer satisfaction. Sterling Multi-Channel Order Management brings order to supply chain and fulfillment complexity. It enables your company to execute and coordinate order fulfillment process across your extended supply chain network. It provides flexible, process-based management of orders from multiple channels and enables customized fulfillment based upon user-defined business requirements. Sterling Commerce delivers the required visibility and event management across all fulfillment activity -allowing you to respond quickly to unexpected problems and meet customer expectations.