SPS Commerce, provider of supply chain integration services, and Virtucom Content Solutions have entered into a joint marketing agreement. The two companies offer complementary products, says Jim Frome, executive vice president of SPS. SPS provides catalog management systems for suppliers and Virtucom provides such systems for retailers. The two systems will be able to work together so retailers can take advantage of the numbering, descriptive and item management systems from suppliers, Frome says.
Virtucom says its customers include BestBuy, Target Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., who are using Virtucom's outsourcing services to manage product information across multiple channels.
The two companies came together when SPS noticed that Virtucom was calling on many of the same customers that SPS called on, selling a system that SPS determined is complementary to its own products, Frome says. Many retailers have several databases to serve the different channels they sell in, Frome says. The Virtucom system helps pull those into one database. At the same time, retailers want to take advantage of the databases that suppliers provide. “For a retailer, doing both at the same time is a more attractive prospect than doing them one at a time,” he says.
Virtucom's outsourcing solutions help retailers streamline the process
of acquiring content assets from manufacturers and then producing custom
product images, descriptions, features and technical specs for use on
e-commerce web sites, in-store signage, advertising programs, training
systems and other applications.
SPS Commerce specializes in helping large enterprises optimize their
supply chains by providing transaction management, application
integration and supply chain services to their small- and mid-size
trading partners via a hosted Internet service. Key customers include W.W. Grainger, Target Corp., REI and Dura Automotive.
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