4.1.3 Manhattan Associates
The Manhattan Association is the main supplier of the retail industry supply chain implementation system.
Corporate situation
The Manhattan Association requires a platform to support its new solution, which provides fast marketization, cost-effective to expand EAI functionality.
For 10 years, Atlanta's Manhattan Association has been the main supplier of supply chain in the retail industry. Most of the company is a major retailer supplier, which rely on the company's solution to manage stocks and deliver goods to retailers. The first product of the company is used to help suppliers to ensure that the unique transport label rules are met with large retailers. These needs are driven by this desire: I want to use barcode technology to use the distribution center and warehouse receipt, these operations are used to manage and send goods from thousands of suppliers.
This feature is extended, and the company has developed PKMS, a world-class warehouse management system (WMS) built around the supply chain collaboration, which is the same type of customer design. Since the release of PKMS, the Manhattan Association has become the largest merchants in the WMS field, with 1100 installations of 750 customers. The company is currently more than 800 employees in the United States and Europe, which is expected to revenue this year of $ 130 million.
solution
The Manhattan Association created its new supply chain collaboration program infolink using Microsoft .NET platform. Suppliers selected INFOLINK can enjoy cost effective collaboration solutions to enable them to work with corporate partners to enhance supply chain and increase operational efficiency.
The Manhattan Association will continue to take advantage of its expertise in the retail supply chain collaboration. The latest product INFOLINK has enable suppliers and retailers to work more closely, thereby increasing the efficiency of both parties. InfoLink is designed for suppliers. It provides suppliers with a tool that uses this tool retailer to recognize parties in the supply chain. You can share information on a higher level, not only to provide transportation notification - the truck is separated from the retailer order, or all of the goods left the warehouse. " Vendors using Infolink provide real-time updates throughout the order arrangement and implementation, including real-time update, providing real-time updates, allowing customers to pre-manage and adjust their logic and Sales Plan.
In order to build InfoLink, the Manhattan Association requires a platform that can make them invested in the market in a short time as possible. In addition, they also want customers to be familiar with and mastered, but they cannot reduce the scalability and effectiveness of the solution. "INFOLINK is designed to be installed on the supplier's site, where it is integrated with the supplier's original system." Capel said, "Since INFOLINK's main function is to extract data from existing system, transfer this information to supplier Business partners - they can run any different systems, so we need a platform with powerful enterprise applications, including real-time data extraction, manipulation, and conversion, "
The Manhattan Association decided to build InfoLink using Microsoft .NET platform, which enables companies to put new products to market new products within four months after the start of development. Through the N-layer structure of the Microsoft platform, the Manhattan Association can use a product to resolve the EAI of B2B business and web components. InfoLink's representation runs on a Microsoft Windows 2000 server with Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0. The management page representation provides the ASP that provides server-side script capability is created with Microsoft Visual InterDev? Web development system.
The company's logic / database layer is located on the second server. This server runs Windows 2000 Server, Microsoft SQL Server® 2000, and BizTalk Server 2000, SQL Server 2000 Data Conversion Services (DTS) for extracting from the original system data. Microsoft Visual Studio? Another component of the development system - Visual Basic? It is used to develop a wide range of business logic, making infolink a powerful tool. InfoLink is installed in the supplier, where it is from the existing ERP and WMS system from the supplier - Most cases are the Manhattan Association's own PKMS software - is the extraction of detailed data. Then it determines if the information is important, whether these data is to be transmitted to the supplier's customers. If so, INFOLINK translates these data into a suitable XML format, transfer it to the required retailer, where it is received and processed by the retailer's internal system.
Because all of this is carried out in real time, when the order status changes in the supplier's internal system, the retail ensures that the information used to make logic and purchase decisions is the latest. For companies without complex ERP systems, INFOLINK also provides a web-based interface. All customer-configured applications are web-based, allowing customers to manage and maintain products.
"In most cases, potential customers have the opportunity to build these functions themselves," Capel said, "which not only requires a wide range of IT work, but also requires continuous upgrades to track all changes in the industry. Due to INFOLINK, our Customers can rely on comprehensive industry experience and knowledge about industry changes. We guarantee that it is consistent with important retailers and uses appropriate XML planning, security features, and transport protocols to prepare InfoLink. When industry organization When modifying or improving these planning, customers can rely on our upgrades based on these changes, and deploy them to their system via the Internet. The supplier can get immediately by using INFOLINK running on the Microsoft platform. Benefits: Traversing the supply chain without the need for too much cost work
