Tokyo/El Segundo, Calif. - April 4, 2001 ---
Fujitsu Limited and its El Segundo, Calif-based business-to-business e-commerce solutions subsidiary, Glovia International, today announced the global launch of glovia.e, a new framework for enabling true global collaborative online commerce. The framework includes a number of new and enhanced software products, along with consulting services that can optimize a solution for sales, manufacturing, distribution and financial services. In the newly introduced glovia.e product is a Global Order Management System that allows companies to manage multiple global commercial processes, as well as complex product and order configurations, within a single multi-lingual Web-based system.
"We believe that the Internet has fundamentally shifted the way companies do business, making every company a participant in a global marketplace, " said Matt O'Malley, president and CEO of Glovia International. "We developed glovia.e to allow companies to fully exploit the potential efficiencies and economies of the Internet. They will now be able to conduct business and complete online transactions with multiple customers and suppliers seamlessly-anywhere, anytime. In particular, our new Global Order Management System provides the optimal means for companies to improve the predictability, accuracy and efficiency of their sales cycles, and to generate strong customer satisfaction and company loyalty."
glovia.e will include a suite of software products, a trading engine and configuration tools, in addition to consulting services. The individual products will be rolled out over the next two quarters. Fujitsu Limited will coordinate marketing and provision of consulting services for glovia.e in Japan and Asia, while Glovia International will do so in the U.S. and Europe.
"Combining advanced technologies and B2B best practices from Fujitsu and Glovia International, glovia.e reflects the Fujitsu Group's 'Everything on the Internet' business direction and is an ideal collaborative online commerce solution," said Hiroya Madarame, Senior Vice President and Group President, Application Software Business Group, Fujitsu Limited. "Together, we intend to develop and aggressively promote a wide range of e-commerce solutions to globally minded companies around the world."
Breaking Down Trade Barriers
Companies seeking to do business globally have traditionally had to overcome multiple barriers to complete transactions. Distance, location and time zone variances are common problems. Language, currency and regulations vary from region to region and country to country. glovia.e provides support for multiple languages, multiple currencies and multiple locations, minimizing many of these issues. And the software is designed to make changes on the fly that allow for often overlooked details such as the amount of space required for text by language, and the number of spaces to the right of the decimal point in currency amounts.
"We developed glovia.e to meet the real business needs of our customers in Asia, Europe and the Americas that all have extensive global business operations," noted James Gorham, Glovia International's senior vice president of sales and marketing. "We reasoned that if we could satisfy the needs of these companies, we would have the most complete-and truly global-solution available on the market."
The New Chain of Demand
glovia.e goes a step beyond supply chain management by optimizing the relationship between supply chain and demand chain operations. "The Internet has begun to fundamentally shift power from the seller to the buyer; in effect, creating a demand chain," noted O'Malley. "Making supply chain processes more efficient is only half the battle. Global e-businesses need to transform their business processes and build their business around their customers, while simultaneously enabling their suppliers and partners access to the kind of real-time information they need to meet the demand."
In developing glovia.e, Glovia International engineers designed a solution that turned the traditional manufacturing process upside down. "The old model was to build something, store it, ship it and then sell it. That meant a company could only be as efficient as its sales forecasts," said O'Malley. "The new model is sell, source and ship. Companies that can master this will improve customer relationships, reduce time to market and also drive costs out of their supply chain."
Transforming Business Processes
"Enterprises realize that conducting meaningful B2B commerce involves far more than just posting a catalog and taking orders from your domestic customers," said William Brandel, research director of e-business at Aberdeen Group. "Trading partners are often scattered across the globe, and need strong purchase planning and post-order support. The glovia.e Global Order Management System represents the kind of functionality that businesses need for real-world order management."
The new Global Order Management System allows companies to manage processes such as pricing, ordering, scheduling and delivery, along with tax and tariff regulations-all transparent to the end user. The fully scaleable product suite includes multi-language, multi-currency and multi-location functions. This enables the efficient completion of online transactions by creating a platform where buyers, sellers and suppliers worldwide can communicate and collaborate.
For example, a customer order from Japan, entered in Japanese, for delivery to Mexico, triggers the need for replacement components from a factory in Brazil. The order is instantly transmitted to the Brazilian factory and displayed in Portuguese. The factory supplier partners respond to the change by automatically replenishing the stock, and billing the appropriate accounting location without waiting for the factory to reorder. The goods can then be shipped to the location in Mexico with details in Spanish. The entire transaction can be recorded in a central database in New York and reconciled in US dollars in the corporate accounting system.
"The key difference in the glovia.e Global Order Management System is that it allows companies to shift to a business model where actual customer demand drives the manufacturing and distribution process," noted O'Malley. "Most current technology approaches don't have this flexibility. They're built on the antiquated 'build-to-stock' model."
Component Architecture
The Global Order Management System is composed of three products: eOrder, eStatus, and eQuote.
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eOrder, an extremely intuitive interface supporting the "ultimate web experience," which allows customers to quickly conduct multiple searches, view product availability and back-order processing, and edit and add items to an existing order. It also easily handles complex pricing calculations and order configurations. Advanced sales methods, including up-selling, cross-selling and product substitution, are all supported.
eStatus provides customers with up-to-the-minute information on order status as well as product information and availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The product's ease of use allows customers to access all the data they need without the aid of a customer service representative. In addition, e-Status enables companies to customize Web pages that allow users to conduct almost any transaction simply by pointing and clicking.
eQuote records, maintains and tracks sales quote information for new and existing clients in a completely secure environment. Automating the pricing of goods and services improves the speed and accuracy of customer quotes, allows for easy data access, and eliminates the need for keying information into customer master records again after a quote is converted to a sales order.
About Glovia International
Headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., and with offices worldwide, Glovia International LLC is the leading provider of e-commerce solutions and world-class services for the digital marketplace. It is the only company to deliver a robust suite of business-to-business "transaction applications" that are fully scalable and seamlessly integrate with existing enterprise systems. With customers like Dell Computer Corporation, Ericsson and Caterpillar, Glovia International's technology enables Fortune 1000 companies to build and run the most advanced digital enterprises that boost their competitiveness in the rapidly evolving global digital economy. Glovia is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited, a US$50 billion leading provider of Internet-based information technology solutions for the global marketplace. For more information, visit www.glovia.com or call (800) 223-3799 or (310) 563-7000.
About Fujitsu
Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) is a leading provider of Internet- based information technology solutions for the global marketplace. Comprising over 500 group companies and affiliates worldwide -- including ICL, Amdahl and DMR Consulting -- it had consolidated revenues of 5.26 trillion yen ($49.6 billion) in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2000. Fujitsu's pace-setting technologies, world-class computing and telecommunications platforms, and global corps of over 60,000 systems and services experts make it uniquely positioned to unleash the infinite possibilities of the Internet to help its customers succeed. Altogether, the Fujitsu Group has 188,000 employees and operations in over 100 countries.
Internet: http://www.fujitsu.com/
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Atsumi Kodama, Nick Hayashi
Fujitsu Limited, Public Relations
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David Peng
Glovia International
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