Shaw’s Supermarkets Selects Sterling Commerce Solution to Increase Order Accuracy through Synchronized Vendor Data

Gentran Integration Suite manages information accuracy pain resulting from the introduction of 800 food items each month

Columbus, Ohio Wednesday, June 11, 2003 -- Sterling Commerce announced today that Shaw’s Supermarkets, the second largest food retailer in New England with more than 185 stores, has selected the Gentran Integration Suite to help the company streamline operations to get the right products on the shelves faster by enabling alignment between vendor-generated updates on item attributes and Shaw’s Supermarkets’ internal work processes.

Shaw’s Supermarkets makes critical business decisions every day from the vast amount of information streaming into the company from thousands of food vendors. With more than 125,000 food items in their catalog and 800 food introductions every month, the company needed a solution capable of updating internal systems after the product information was routed to the appropriate category managers for acceptance, changes or rejections.

"Our ability to quickly replenish stock is critical, and to make this happen, we need accurate information that is synchronized with our vendors on all product orders," said Al Joughin, vice president, Information Technology Systems, Shaw’s Supermarkets. "Focusing on cleaning up new item data was a logical starting point for us since this will enable us to capture the data correctly from inception."

Shaw’s Supermarkets decided to look at its business processes surrounding the introduction of new food items to make sure the right people and systems had access to the necessary information. Gentran Integration Suite’s integration broker allowed the company to visually map the information flow.

"Using the product’s visual modeling capability, we were able to define a business process to access information coming into Shaw’s Supermarkets from a variety of sources, build the logic for human interaction, and post the accurate and updated information to our internal systems on the effective date," said Joughin. "Through this process, we also uncovered bottlenecks, delays in update timing, and manual processes that could be eliminated."

Shaw’s Supermarkets links its accurate product information to the UCCnet GLOBALRegistry, which is the consumer packaged goods industry’s yellow pages that lists all items from participating publishers and the location where information for each of the items can be found. Sterling Commerce is a preferred alliance partner of UCCnet and its Gentran Integration Suite is one of the few solutions certified to support the multiple UCCnet XML transactions and all the necessary secure Internet communications.

Gentran Integration Suite’s modular structure allows Shaw’s Supermarkets to meet its data synchronization needs today and align with future integration goals. "Synchronizing data to ensure the placement of accurate orders is only the first step in streamlining supply chain processes," said Joughin. "All participants in the supply chain will require clean data to improve vendor collaboration, planning, forecasting and replenishment processes."

"Companies such as Shaw’s Supermarkets are looking to realize a quick ROI through a phased implementation of integration projects," said Sam Starr, president and CEO of Sterling Commerce. "At the same time, these companies are rushing to improve the efficiency within their supply chains to cut unnecessary costs and become more competitive."

About Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc.
Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc. operates 188 Shaw’s and Star Market store locations and two distribution centers throughout the six New England states. The Company serves more than four million customers each week and has approximately 30,000 associates. During the most recently completed fiscal year, total Company sales were $4.4 billion. Shaw’s is a wholly-owned subsidiary of J Sainsbury plc.