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Crowley Maritime Achieves 91 Percent Return on Investment with Gentran Integration Suite from Sterling CommerceBOSTON --(Business Wire)-- Nucleus Research analysts have found a return on investment (ROI) of 91 percent with payback in 14 months time at Crowley Maritime, based on an independent examination of the deployment of Gentran Integration SuiteTM (GIS) from Sterling Commerce. GIS enabled Crowley to boost productivity, streamline transactions and lower costs. Crowley Maritime provides maritime services, including shipping, barge towing, ship escorting and ship management with its fleet of more than 210 vessels consisting of cargo ships, tankers, tugs and barges. The business requires rapid on-boarding, billing and invoicing of customers, each of which must complete a variety of complex transactions with Crowley. The company's Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) volume had increased 500 percent over five years and senior management wanted to ensure Crowley's ability to sustain its growth rate without harming service delivery. Crowley had been using EDI over its mainframe and a value-added network (VAN) in order to complete transactions with customers as well as partners, such as railroads, U.S. Customs, and freight forwarding companies. Access to the VAN was costly and workflows were complex, labor intensive and error prone. Crowley selected Gentran Integration Suite, a development and integration platform for business-to-business (B2B) collaboration based on a multi-enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) foundation, to simplify how the company exchanges data and completes transactions with customers and partners. GIS was chosen for its ability to seamlessly integrate with a variety of development languages, platforms and protocols and its ease-of-use in automating workflows. Further, the Sterling Commerce solution allowed Crowley to adopt SOA practices for future projects. GIS now supports 90 percent of Crowley's B2B transactions, many executed more rapidly now, and has helped Crowley eliminate VAN costs, increase EDI volume without adding IT headcount, and improve overall productivity that yielded a 91 percent ROI with payback in 14 months. "The ROI for Crowley Maritime's deployment of Gentran Integration Suite is multi-fold, leading to higher productivity and lower costs," said David O'Connell, senior analyst, Nucleus Research. The full case study is available at NucleusResearch.com All Nucleus Research ROI case studies are independent assessments, evaluating the costs and benefits from the IT deployment. About Nucleus Research Nucleus Research is a global provider of IT research and advisory services that provides CFOs, CIOs and their staffs with the real-world information they need to maximize the business returns from their technology investments, including successfully executing their IT deployments and determining the business value of their initiatives. For more information, visit NucleusResearch.com. |
