Gottschalks Selects Global eXchange Services as Exclusive Provider for Data Synchronization and Transaction Services
U.S. Retailer Leads Charge to Increase Supply Chain Efficiencies and Transaction Visibility Among its 1,200 Suppliers
GAITHERSBURG, MD—December 2, 2003—Global eXchange Services, Inc. today announced they will be the sole provider of data synchronization and transaction services to Gottschalks Inc. (NYSE:GOT). With 64 department stores across California, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Nevada, Gottschalks is one of the most popular regional retail establishments in the Western United States. Capitalizing on Global eXchange Services’ strong community enablement capabilities, Gottschalks will quickly convert all of its 1,200 suppliers to the Global eXchange Services’ network with minimal supplier impact.
Under the agreement, Global eXchange Services will provide Gottschalks and their 1,200 suppliers with data synchronization solutions and an end-to-end transaction management solution. Employing the AS2 standard, the new system will enable Gottschalks and its supply chain partners to conduct secure and reliable transmission of documents over the Internet. The AS2 protocol allows for real-time transmission capabilities, immediate notification of receipt, and addresses the concerns of security, privacy and manageability.
Embracing data synchronization as the foundation for improved data quality and supply chain efficiencies, Gottschalks will also employ Global eXchange Services’ unique visibility and analytics management suite that contributes to decreased shipping costs and manual overhead. The management suite includes functional acknowledgement and exception-based alerts that give proactive notification of exceptions with supplier transactions and trading partner delays – instead of requiring distribution staff to manually audit for problems. Dashboards, transaction back-up protection, and 24-hour support ensure that key business documents are exchanged in a highly secure environment. These capabilities equip retailers with a new generation of tools that enable trending analysis to spot problems within their trading community and automatically generate notifications to the appropriate parties.
“We found Global eXchange Services to be an ideal partner and the only company that could deliver us a truly integrated offering that addressed our data synchronization, transaction services and community enablement needs,” said Jeff Kratt, Senior Director of IT at Gottschalks. “Working with Global eXchange Services gives us 100 percent confidence in moving forward with data synchronization and our supply chain transaction processes, while lowering costs and greatly reducing manual audit efforts.”
As part of its comprehensive data synchronization solution, Global eXchange Services’ Global Product Catalogue (GPC) will become the product information repository of choice for all of Gottschalks’ 1,200 suppliers. The data synchronization solution ensures the accuracy of merchandise ordering and receiving between Gottschalks and its suppliers. This will enable more efficient and accurate item look-ups, improving efficiency in merchandising and logistics, and lowering cost by ensuring that accurate and complete product information is exchanged.
“Gottschalks is representative of the rapidly expanding number of retailers that are leveraging data synchronization and AS2 solutions to maximize the effectiveness of their extended supply chains,” said Nick Marchetti, VP of B2B Services at Global eXchange Services. “The addition of Gottschalks and its 1,200-supplier community expands Global eXchange Services’ top-notch retail client base and reinforces that our end-to-end data synchronization and transaction management solutions are ideally suited to help companies build highly efficient online trading communities across a variety of industries.”
About Gottschalks
Gottschalks is a regional department store chain, currently operating sixty-four department stores and eleven specialty stores in six western states, including California (39), Washington (13), Alaska (6), Oregon (2), Nevada (2) and Idaho (2). Gottschalks offers better to moderate brand-name fashion apparel, cosmetics, shoes, accessories and home merchandise. Gottschalks offers corporate information and selected merchandise on the World Wide Web at www.gottschalks.com.
About Global eXchange Services
Global eXchange Services, Inc. operates one of the largest B2B e-commerce networks in the world, managing 1 billion transactions annually for more than 100,000 trading partners. With more than 35 years experience, Global eXchange Services provides supply chain services and software to 60% of FORTUNE 500 companies. Global eXchange Services is headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD. Call (800) 560-4347 or visit our Web site at www.gxs.com.
All products and services mentioned are trademarks of their respective companies.
Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
This document includes certain “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may differ materially from these expectations due to changes in global political, economic, business, competitive, market and regulatory factors. These factors include technological developments, customer demand, trading partner participation and network availability.
Contacts:
Scott Frank
Global eXchange Services, Inc.
(301) 340-4322
Scott.Frank@gxs.com
Bryan Grillo
CHEN PR, Inc.
(781) 466-8282, ext. 29
bgrillo@chenpr.com
Chris Noble
Gottschalks
(559) 434-4737
chris.noble@gottschalks.com
Back...
