At the Automotive Industry Action Groups AutoTech conference in Detroit this week, QAD Inc. and Sterling Commerce Inc. will announce an enhanced partnership that provides a new set of software and services to help manufacturers more consistently integrate with partners, customers and suppliers.
The QAD Extended Ecommerce Solution will build on QADs existing software—MFG/Pro and EDI Ecommerce—and bring in services and business-to-business integration capabilities from Sterling.
QAD, of Carpinteria, Calif., develops business software for manufacturers that provides capabilities ranging from financial planning to supply chain execution and post-sale management. Its MFG/Pro software regulates manufacturing activity in a variety of production environments. EDI Ecommerce is a transaction mapping application that manages EDI (electronic data interchange) transactions between MFG/Pro and other systems.
Sterling, on the other hand, provides B2B collaboration capabilities, including EDI services and, more recently, integration.
As a result of the partnership, QADs Total Ecommerce Solution provides a menu of software and services that help companies more consistently integrate global partners into their back-end systems. The two companies software offerings have been preconfigured to work together, and the Total Ecommerce Solution will be supported by implementation services and support from QAD.
As part of the offering, QAD will resell Sterlings Gentran Integration Suite, which lets users extend supply chain processes to partners, officials said.
By teaming with Sterling, of Dublin, Ohio, QAD hopes to provide users with a “round trip” in terms of business integration. The Total Ecommerce Solution will include capabilities for communications, translation, application integration, BPM (business process management) and business activity management. It will also include prebuilt maps, templates and integration services specific to the manufacturing industry.
The companies have a long-standing relationship and many of the same users; QAD has already configured its software to integrate with Sterlings for better integration within an e-commerce platform, officials of the two companies said.