E-COMMErCE

Working on Verticals
Progress software Corporation is an independent enterprise software company that enables businesses to be operationally responsive to changing conditions and customer interactions as they occur to capitalize on new opportunities, drive greater efficiencies and reduce risk.
at Progress Software from his Redwood City, CA office, Kumar shares his desire to put a fine point on the unique strengths of each companys solution, and how both systems work so well together. Sanjay, Progress Software and TIE Kinetix have worked closely for years now, and the integration between the two has gained traction in the last year. How has this progression developed, and where has it resonated in the marketplace? The relationship has been going on for some time, but about a year ago, we started to get more exposure around the things we had to do in different verticals. We started having a stronger focus in certain verticals where our products worked as solutions in that space. It looked like it was starting to align very well with some of the activities that TIE Kinetix was doing. We set up an exploratory set of meetings to better understand the type of things TIE was doing with telecommunication companies such as T-Mobile and KPN, where the TIE Kinetix MamboFive E-Commerce solution was utilized as an online storefront. In doing so we also saw its

interview with sanjay kumar, Progress software

he company offers a comprehensive portfolio of best-in-class enterprise software spanning event-driven visibility and real-time response, open integration, data access and integration, and application development and deployment all supporting onpremises and SaaS/Cloud deployments. Typical value driven customer relationships in the online age are a demanding thing as service providers look to improve their online process. Advancements allowing solutions infrastructure, offerings, and capabilities to provide for the ever changing needs of customers can be a moving target. Simply put, an intelligently equipped and implemented E-Commerce shop allows users to keep costs down, while providing a streamlined

sales infrastructure allowing consumers to execute complex processes via a simple and elegant interface. Progress Software has been a strategic partner of TIE Kinetix for over 10 years allowing TIE to deliver pioneering solutions built on the Progress framework. More recently however, Progress has been using TIE MamboFive E-Commerce suite as a front end application to the multifaceted backend of Progress Softwares Communications Order Management Solution. Speaking with Sanjay Kumar, VP of Communications & Media Industry

TIE has been fantastic in actually projecting to the next generation what they want to see.

P18 ~ 2012 ~ TIE

Author Jim Larkin ~ Photography Stock photo

strong ability to act as the order entry/ order capture system enabling self care from a customer perspective. For example, once youve captured a customer order, how do you orchestrate all the work that needs to be done across multiple systems, multiple processes and avenues like that to bring a customer on and activate their service, with any updates to that service? All those moving parts. Its obviously a big area of focus for service providers. So what was interesting, we found that what TIE was doing could be the front end to the things that we would do. Thats where we started to have the conversation around exploring opportunity. Over the last year there were a number of situations where customers were saying Youre doing the order management what can you do on the order capture side? In which case, we entered into the conversation with TIE Kinetix to help on that front. There have been a number of occasions throughout the year where weve been able to present a combined solution while still working as separate entities. Progress and TIE presented at the TM Forum together in Dublin, IR earlier this year, where many from the

telecommunications industry came together to talk about innovations in the marketplace. What was the initial reaction from that event? We saw a lot of excitement there. We were doing a catalyst helping to define how to work within these managed service offerings that service providers run for enterprise level customers, such as banks. It was interesting because there was strong interest from the telecom industry, but it had a lot of overlap with the financial services sector because often they were the end customers for these services. It resonated in the industry especially as it relates to TIEs mobile storefront, and it can be used across a whole series of solutions that service providers are selling. It also became really interesting as TIE started applying it to areas of the managed service models that started appearing. So its been a great year. Were still building on a number of these opportunities as they pop up as a result of our initial discussions. How has TIEs strengths manifested in the partnership with Progress Software in terms of both technology, and experience?

As a company TIE has been great with a very rapid response to these activities. Very little red tape, with a great commitment to making things happen, which is critical. Thats a very strong component. From a solution perspective, its very easy to showcase your offering to demonstrate what would be the desired result. Its amazing how fast you can show those activities. Especially compared to other traditional solution sets that are out there, those that are non-CRM based, non-SaaS based type of offerings. Its that speed of change that translates to time to market for service providers; its a fantastic story. It complements the Progress value proposition well, where things are really driven by much quicker time to market, the convergence of products and services and the bundling of those against the challenges that they relate to. The partnership with TIE has worked extremely well in that type of model, with a strong motivation. It doesnt hurt that Progress technology is inside the TIE product. It just makes it easier to work together. Not that the technology was ever a challenge, but the fact is we have a relationship from all sides.
TIE ~ 2012 ~ P19

Author Jim Larkin ~ Photography Clopay

The other part is that the technology meets the end desire. It has a fantastic wow factor when you present it to the business community. Being able to show the type of experience that customers will have, or how to use it internally, and being able to see some of those results right away, being able to show it on a notepad, it has a very powerful attraction from the business teams. Its an area where service providers traditionally have been too technology and engineering oriented, with not enough focus around the customer experience and the overall look and feel that the customer would have. TIE has been fantastic in projecting to the next generation what they want to actually see.

Weve worked closely for over 10 years, and have had a great synergy particularly in the last year. What are your projections for 2012 and beyond? There is certainly been a strong commitment to a strategy around becoming more solution and vertical focused. In 2011, we built a new relationship. Prior to that was an underlying technology that Progress had as part of the solution sets at TIE. It was much more of a partnership in terms of how we go to market with your solution and our solution as a common value and proposition to customers. I think were going to see a lot more of that in 2012. As we see these opportunities with a global footprint, it matters how quickly we can move down those paths. 2012 is where well start truly reaping the benefits and seeing this type of value proposition really grow. Its part of a strategy across a number of industries around the idea of helping service providers enhance their end to end customer experience. As we partner together, we have the enabling technology to get access to their systems, orchestrate activities, with response to operational pains. That combined with the solutions that TIE provides enabling interaction with their customers and being able to determine a lot of the metrics and activities that are happening along that front. You can see a great synergy to be able to build a greater picture around that end-to-end customer experience management initiative. Its exciting working with TIE, as its a very agile company from an organizational perspective. From a solution perspective TIE has been a pleasure to work with as well. I think were going to see a lot more aspects grow in 2012 on this front, because of that culture and vision in terms of the new future facing solutions for our enterprise customers.

Clopay
Building Products Division with four manufacturing facilities and 49 distribution centers across the U.S. and Canada, Clopay is North Americas leading manufacturer of residential garage doors and a leader in the industrial door market.

ringing more than 40 years of leadership to the garage door industry, Clopay is the only garage door manufacturer to hold the Good Housekeeping Seal. Plastic Products Division With three locations in the US, three in Germany, and one in Brazil, Clopay is a global leader in specialty films, extrusion coatings, custom-printing and engineered laminations. The company is widely known for its unique technology developments in the areas of microporous breathable, elastomerics, monolithic, and apertured films and composites. Clopays products are used in the hygienic, healthcare, protective apparel, and industrial markets. TIghT b2b InTegraTIon Industrial door leader Clopay needed a more efficient way of managing their business to business integration with partners and customers. They found the day-to-day operation of an in-house Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) program intensive and expensive. Maintaining updated trading partner versions, training and retaining qualified technical resources, and purchasing in-house software is costly and unmanageable. Recognizing these needs, they decided to fully outsource their EDI processes to an experienced

sanjay kumar, Vice President, Communications & Media industry at Progress software
P20 ~ 2012 ~ TIE

BusiNEss iNTEGrATiON

Saves Big

partner like TIE Kinetix. Other determining factors that made the purchasing decision much easier were: TIEs reasonable price, well known reliability, support and confirmation from several satisfied customers. TIE Kinetix has years of experience in supporting the operation of missioncritical electronic commerce processes in the area of communications and document mapping requirements specified by our customers in the retail and manufacturing industry, says Carmel Hirth, Director of IT for Clopay. The implementation needed to be seamless to their trading partners and a detailed project plan was made with specific expectations from both parties. Both companies worked together to set up a reconciliation process to ensure the accuracy of all inbound and outbound transactions. In a very short timeframe, Clopay had outsourced all its EDI translation, mapping development and enhancements, new trading partner set ups, daily reconciliation, error troubleshooting and communications to TIE. ouTsourCIng TIE worked very closely with the technical and business teams of Clopay to provide an SAS 70 compliant outsourced solution utilizing datacenter infrastructure provided by Connectria Corporation. This

solution not only supported the integration of the companys internal business processes, but more importantly enabled direct connections between the business processes of Clopay and its trading partners. TIE Kinetix interfaces provided an easy-to-use solution that ensured flexibility enough for any kind of integration scenario in the future. Clopay is fully outsourced using TIE Kinetix Business Integration Platform connected to the TIE directConnect Communications network allowing them to enjoy the advantages of true eBusiness through a secure Internet businessto-business gateway. Using this powerful combination gives the flexibility to rapidly implement new E-Commerce processes with their Oracle Applications Suite to increase visibility, efficiency and response to market conditions. As a result of Outsourcing its supply chain connections, Clopay has been able to focus on improving and optimizing its internal business applications and has experienced an annual cost savings of over $80,000 in the first year of service. Desmond Allen, Clopays IT Help Desk Manager and E-Commerce Coordinator had this to say about the solution, Of

The overall costs for data storage and software execution have been significantly reduced.

course we have added trading partners, more documents, and transfers. We even added another dedicated line for XML transfers from a particular vendor. There is daily use of web tools for research and support that we use and have even taught our customer service teams to use. Through it all we have benefitted from TIEs expertise with multiple transfer/delivery protocols and suggesting fixes for daily issues that arise. The team has gone out of their way to make sure our business can not only receive and process current documents but grow incrementally. TIEs powerful integration capabilities have enabled Clopay to effortlessly transact business and manage more than 17,000 transactions per month without error. The overall costs for data storage and software execution have been significantly reduced, and the time dedicated to both new trading partner set up and integration formats have been reduced by 75%. In addition, we have been able to keep the headcount down in our department and while still maintaining system integrity to support our business and meet our trading partner requirements, Hirth said. Outsourcing our EDI services to TIE has been one of the best business decisions that we could have made.
TIE ~ 2012 ~ P21