Office Depot Selects Cardonet for Custom Catalog Creation and Syndication
Santa Clara, Calif. - June 11, 2003 - Cardonet, Inc., a provider of advanced
product information management solutions for medium to large enterprises,
today announced that Office Depot, the world`s largest seller of office
products and a recognized leader in e-commerce, has selected Cardonet`s
Product Master software to streamline the process of creating and
syndicating custom electronic product catalogs.
Office Depot creates hundreds of custom versions of its catalog with full
text, descriptions and images for distribution to key customers each month.
By deploying Cardonet`s automated software, Office Depot expects to save
time and money by improving its product data aggregation and quality
assurance processes. Office Depot is using the Cardonet solution to support
its existing base of e-commerce customers, as well as to manage its product
feeds to search engines and portals.
"Our goal is to be both responsive to our customers and to make it simple
for our customers to find our products while searching the Internet," said
Monica Luechtefeld, Office Depot EVP for Global ECommerce.
"In choosing Cardonet over a considerable field of competitors, we expect to
dramatically streamline the way to do e-business with many of our largest
customers and online partners," added Barbara Zaborowski, ECommerce Customer
Integration Manager for Office Depot. "These customers require timely
product data in a format suited to their unique content and technical needs
and delivered according to their schedules. With Cardonet we`ve found a tool
that helps us to meet challenges like this in a timely and efficient
manner."
Cardonet employs a rules-driven approach that allows Office Depot to easily
assemble custom catalogs by sourcing information from the company`s master
catalog of more than 115,000 products. Each catalog is then customized to
accommodate the unique requirements of Office Depot`s customers regarding
product subsets, product classifications, special pricing, and other
factors.
With over 1,000 customer implementations, Office Depot is the industry
leader in 3rd party software partner integrations. Maintaining e-catalogs
for these external interfaces efficiently was the reason for selecting the
Cardonet tool.
"E-commerce is becoming increasingly important for distributors as a key
revenue channel, and companies must be able to efficiently respond to
requests for e-catalogs or run the risk of losing business to their
competitors," said Itay Meiri, CEO and co-founder of Cardonet. "By choosing
Cardonet, Office Depot gains the flexibility to rapidly grow their
e-commerce initiative without having to increase their internal staffing."
The flexible architecture of Cardonet is allowing Office Depot to automate
the catalog distribution process based on channel-specific format
requirements, delivery preferences and syndication schedules. Data can be
output in virtually any format to support different e-procurement systems
and trading platforms used by their customers and in popular e-marketplaces.
About Office Depot
No one sells more office products to more customers in more countries than
Office Depot. The Company operates under the Office Depot(R), Viking Office
Products(R), Viking Direct(R) and 4Sure.com(R) brand names. As of March
29, 2003, Office Depot operated 871 office supply superstores in the United
States and Canada, in addition to a national business-to-business delivery
network supported by 24 delivery centers, more than 60 local sales offices
and 13 regional call centers. Furthermore, the Company sells products and
services in 20 countries outside of the United States and Canada, including
38 office supply stores in France, one in Spain and 12 in Japan that are
owned and operated by the Company; and 123 additional office supply stores
under joint venture and licensing agreements operating under the Office
Depot(R) name in seven foreign countries.
The Company also operates an award-winning U.S. Office Depot brand web site
at www.officedepot.com where customers can access Office Depot`s low
competitive prices seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. The Company
also operates more than 30 other web sites in the U.S. and 13 international
countries including: Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Japan, Germany,
Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the
United Kingdom.
Office Depot`s common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under
the symbol ODP and is included in the S&P 500 Index.
About Cardonet, Inc.
Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., Cardonet, Inc.,
(www.cardonet.com) is a leading provider of product information management
solutions used by medium to large enterprises to streamline their business
processes. Cardonet`s rules-driven automation technology and advanced
process-oriented workflows, provide both buy-side and sell-side
organizations with powerful solutions for developing, managing, and
distributing rich electronic databases of product information. Privately
held, Cardonet`s primary investors include Cargill, Giza GE Capital, Intel
Capital, Sequoia Capital, Yozma Venture Capital and Mentor Capital Group.
>
Contact:
Rich Dickerson
Vice President, Marketing
Cardonet, Inc.
2041 Mission College Blvd., Suite #150
Santa Clara, CA 95054
408-521-6049
richd@cardonet.com
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