Case study

Gentran Integration Suite makes it easy to do business with ViewSonic

ViewSonic® Corporation is a leading global provider of visual display solutions, including plasma and LCD products, for business, education and consumer electronics markets.

Business Challenge

ViewSonic knew its competitive edge would be to offer maximum flexibility when customers placed, checked or changed orders. By becoming known as the "company easy to do business with," ViewSonic would be able to quickly and easily onboard new business partners, drive down costs and create sustainable new revenue streams.
ViewSonic knew exactly what it needed: a flexible multi-enterprise service-oriented architecture that would streamline operating practices and enable transactions with all new business partners, thus creating new revenue channels and improving delivery capabilities. Quite simply, ViewSonic wanted to do what others in the industry weren't: focus on IT as a competitive weapon.

The Solution

The Sterling Commerce Gentran Integration Suite^TM (GIS) has become the foundation of ViewSonic's multi-enterprise service-oriented architecture.
Paul Gonzalez, Sr. Oracle Programmer for ViewSonic, said GIS lets his company tie its business-to-business and internal systems together, creating long-term sustainable architecture required for organic growth. "This allows us to focus on modeling and refining our business, instead of focusing on the underlying technology," he said.
With GIS in place, ViewSonic processed nearly 1.5 million transactions in 2006 and will increase that number by at least 30% during 2007. Every single transaction is accessible in near real-time, and since many of these documents are multi-million dollar purchase orders, getting to the information quickly gives ViewSonic a tremendous advantage in the marketplace. "GIS gives us an edge in the highly competitive retail channel by enabling us to trade documents with our business partners in the manner that most easily fits their style," Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez also said GIS has allowed ViewSonic to keep up with the ever-growing demand from customers, even while the company's IT staff has decreased. "The flexibility of GIS enables us to say ‘yes' to all our partners - from major retailers to small, family run businesses - by implementing new components into the robust out-of-the-box framework that is provided. That means we've been able to create new revenue opportunities without incurring additional resource expenses. We realized a return on our investment with GIS within 12 months."

Key Benefits

Simplifies business processes and improves revenue generation GIS improves revenue generation because it allows ViewSonic to rapidly respond to all new business opportunities, despite a new partner's disparate connectivity technology. In addition, GIS provides visibility into near real-time transactions, which allows ViewSonic to exceed customer demands and remain well positioned to grow and adapt as technological needs evolve.

Minimal technical expertise needed

The strong process modeler in GIS simplifies automation, integration and exception handling without requiring employees to write one line of code. These built-in services handle otherwise complicated programming tasks and require a minimal amount of technical expertise.

Improves product delivery and time to market

Now ViewSonic can mine and analyze point-of-sale data, leading to more accurate demand forecasting and planning. This gives the company better control of its inventory and allows for faster product introductions and delivery times to retailers, ensuring products are at customer sites when, how, and in the quantities needed to grow sales. Ultimately, GIS automates new customers while decreasing the time to design, develop and implement business-to-business integration by 75%.

Enhances customer service

GIS notifies ViewSonic's sales force if a customer has modified an order after it's been sent, which allows them to quickly respond. With improved customer service, sales of one key account grew by more than 600 percent.