GXS 2008 Customer Awards Program Winners

GXS is pleased to announce the winners of our 2008 Customer Innovation Awards. Now in its third year, these awards recognize companies making innovative use of GXS’s services and solutions. Nominees for the 2008 GXS Customer Innovation Awards were evaluated by a panel of judges that included Andrew Reese, editor of Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine, Clive Longbottom, service director at analyst firm, Quocirca and John Radko, GXS’s chief technology strategist. Representing a variety of industry verticals and geographic markets, the winners have demonstrated best practices in B2B e-commerce and B2B outsourcing to advance and streamline their global supply chains.

The 2008 Customer Award Winners are:

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  Best Use of GXS Trading Grid to Increase B2B e-Commerce Automation
  This award recognizes companies that have had the greatest impact in B2B e-commerce during the last 12 months. These companies also demonstrate best practices in using GXS solutions to transform and streamline their B2B e-commerce programs. Sony BMG is one of the largest music and entertainment companies in the world, and has undertaken an ambitious and far-reaching project to use GXS Trading Grid® as the platform to automate trading with its major retailers—many of which are new trading partners. With orders for thousands of CDs at a time, efficiency is king. GXS Trading Grid® provides Sony with 24x7 service and support enabling retailers to place orders at any time. Orders, order responses and electronic invoicing are now handled electronically using electronic data interchange (EDI). Sony’s product catalog, once emailed manually, is now pushed out in a regular weekly feed using GXS Trading Grid.
  

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  Best Use of B2B Outsourcing to Accelerate Competitive Differentiation
  This award recognizes companies that are using GXS Managed Service in innovative and beneficial ways to further the benefits of e commerce. With 680 stores in the U.S., Circuit City has hundreds of suppliers ranging from major, well-known manufacturers of consumer electronics to smaller, seasonal suppliers. As of 2006, the retailer was processing approximately five million paper invoices per year and growing. Prior to selecting GXS, Circuit City was only able to send or receive documents electronically from some suppliers, causing inefficiencies, increasing costs and leading to errors in the supply chain. To enable all its suppliers to conduct e-commerce, Circuit City is using GXS Intelligent Web Forms, an Internet-based forms solution that enables companies to trade electronically by simply filling out fields in a customized web-form. As a result, Circuit City has completely eliminated paper invoices and has managed a five-fold increase in invoice volume without adding Accounts Payable staff.

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  Best Use of GXS Trading Grid® to Enhance Global Supply Chain Visibility
  This award recognizes companies that have enhanced visibility into their supply chain processes, such as the order lifecycle, logistics, invoicing or payments, with quantifiable operational costs savings. In 2006, DHL began a far-reaching program that has radically re-envisioned the company’s core B2B platform and transformed it from a technical infrastructure into a visibility engine that provides value-added services to the business. GXS Trading Grid is at the core of this B2B platform that services the needs of DHL’s largest customers worldwide. The platform handles about 50 million transactions per month and is rapidly rising as DHL adds new customers. In this complex global business, being able to track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from start to finish represents the route to success. For example, one of DHL’s customers has a contract in place that states that it will route an EDI message to DHL’s B2B gateway and expect an acknowledgement within 120 seconds. If that fails, the contract specifies that the customer will immediately switch business to a DHL competitor. So superior service levels and crystal clear visibility into the processes are essential to DHL’s business success.

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  Best Use of GXS Trading Grid® to Accelerate Supply Chain Globalization
  This award recognizes companies that have leveraged GXS Trading Grid to successfully build and sustain highly-competitive global supply chains in an increasingly flat world. Headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany, Henkel’s B2B strategy has been an important contributor to international business growth. As an indication of B2B’s role, the volume of Henkel’s EDI traffic has been growing at an impressive rate of 15 percent per year. This year, Henkel expects to exchange between 200,000 and 300,000 messages a month with about 1,000 principal customers. A key contributor to the success of Henkel’s B2B platform was the decision to shift away from a variety of localized EDI implementations and instead consolidate on one player with a global footprint, GXS. These improvements were primarily from growth regions outside Europe and North America, highlighting the importance of a global strategy.

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  Best Use of GXS Trading Grid® to Reduce Environmental Impact
  This award recognizes companies that are using GXS Trading Grid to reduce their environmental impact by minimizing paper-based transactions and/or streamlining their supply chain operations to minimize their use of oil, gas and carbon-emitting energy resources. As one of the largest supermarket chains in the UK, Sainsbury’s strives to reduce environmental waste and to be a leader among UK companies for its environmentally-friendly operations. B2B electronic trading via GXS Trading Grid® plays an integral role in reducing the retailer’s overall environmental impact. In recent years, Sainsbury’s has stepped up its EDI use, primarily as the company’s business has expanded beyond the core grocery sector. The company also has rolled out the use of Advanced Shipment Notices (ASN) which have provided clear environmental gains by increasing visibility throughout the supply chain. The increased automation and supply chain visibility improves scheduling and helps drive down emissions (i.e., fewer trucks idling at delivery or pick-up sites). Sainsbury’s has published specific targets for improving the efficiency of its supply chain. The stated goals are to reduce CO2 emissions per case transported by 5 percent by March 2009, and to reduce the distance fleet and suppliers travel by 5 million km by 2010, through increased backhaul activity.

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  Best Use of GXS Trading Grid® to Improve Data Accuracy
  This award recognizes companies that have made the best use of managing their product data using dynamic business rules to enhance customer loyalty, protect brand equity and reduce operational costs in their extended supply chain. Previously, Best Buy US had determined that between 30 to 60 percent of the item data in their item master files contained errors, leading to significantly increased costs in their supply chain. Best Buy recognized that product data errors have a profound impact on supply chain costs and customer satisfaction. For example, if a consumer purchases a plasma or LCD display television and then finds upon delivery that the dimensions are incorrect, and the item does not fit in its intended space, the result is a returned product and a dissatisfied customer. Best Buy selected GXS Product Data Quality (PDQ) service to provide an information firewall to ensure the accuracy of product data specific to Best Buy’s requirements prior to entry into its systems via the Global Data Synchronization Network. The data is passed through business rules for validation, and exceptions are managed by the GXS Data Quality Center of Excellence. As a result of ‘clean and accurate’ product data, Best Buy is building on its customer centricity and efficient enterprise goals, gaining a strategic competitive advantage.

If you’re a GXS customer using our products and services in innovative ways, we encourage you to apply for the 2009 Customer Awards program.  Please click here to apply online.