General Electric
Enterprise Keeps Trucking Firm’s Costs Low [LinkAGE / General Electric]
by Hope Katz Gibbs
LinkAGE: News about Electronic Commerce
General Electric
Sales are soaring at American Freightways, an $870-million trucking company in Harrison, Arkansas. In 1997, the 16-year-old company was the eighth-largest revenue generator among the 111,000 U.S. trucking firms that
make up the $168-billion less-than-truckload (LTL) industry.
American Freightways has kept revenues high by using GE Information Service’s (GE) Enterprise System to keep costs low. Since 1996, Enterprise System has saved the company about $550,000, says Dwayne Foresee, American Freightways’ electronic data interchange (EDI) systems specialist.
Productivity also has improved. “We are now able to better monitor our data and control its flow,” Foresee says. “If there is a problem I can go right out to the computer and re-queue data or re-send it as necessary.
Grocer’s Extranet Gives Suppliers New Tool [LinkAGE / General Electric]
by Hope Katz Gibbs
LinkAGE: News about Electronic Commerce
General Electric
One thing shoppers won’t find at Tesco, the largest food retailer in the United Kingdom, is empty shelves—not since it started rolling out the Tesco Information Exchange (TIE), an Extranet that will link the retailer all of its suppliers to increase product availability and reduce waste.
One such supplier, St. Ives, expects that TIE will enable the company to save 30 percent of its annual cost of product promotions.
“With TIE, our [promotion] forecasting improved significantly,” says Dan Rusga, national account manager. He adds that “sharing estimates with Tesco early on in the process highlighted any significant differences between our estimates and those of Tesco and ensured that we jointly agreed on the way forward.”
Retailer’s Extranet to Link 12,000 Vendors [LinkAGE / General Electric]
by Hope Katz Gibbs
LinkAGE: News about Electronic Commerce
General Electric
If you need a new pair of running shoes or a 96-pack of disposable (diapers, you might make a quick trip to your neighborhood Target store. However, if you are one of the 12,000 vendors that supply goods to the five retail store chains owned by Dayton Hudson Corporation—Target, Mervyn’s California, Dayton’s, Hudson’s, and Marshall Field’s—you can soon do business with the fifth-largest retailer in the United States simply by taking a trip down die information superhighway.
Thanks to GE Information Services, Dayton Hudson has a new Extranet, an Internet-based network that links companies with their trading partners.
“When it’s up and running at full capacity by mid-1999, the GE system will enable about 12,000 Dayton Hudson vendors to do business online,” says Rachelle Chase, director of electronic commerce services at Dayton Hudson.
Smart Card Gives Fleet Owners More Control [LinkAGE / General Electric]
by Hope Katz Gibbs
LinkAGE: News about Electronic Commerce
General Electric
It’s the size of a credit card, it enables Brazil’s truckers to buy everything from gas and oil to meals, and it promises to save truck fleet owners thousands of dollars. This tiny technological wonder is the Bradesco Road Card—or, Cartao Rodoviario Bradesco.
And GE Information Services do Brasil, Ltda., together with Bradesco, the largest bank in South America, is launching it this fall. GE Information Ser-vices is providing the electronic data interchange (EDI) for the whole system, including gas stations, fleet owners, and banks.
Ruy Rede, general manager for GE Information Services do Brasil, says the product is designed to fill a kind of accounting gap in the trucking industry.
Pretty as a Picture [LinkAGE / General Electric]
by Hope Katz Gibbs
LinkAGE: News about Electronic Commerce
General Electric
Picture this: Less than two years ago, Kodak’s electronic 10 commerce efforts were hit-or-miss, with no centralized electronic data interchange (EDI) system.
Across Europe, Japan, and the United States, each Kodak operating unit comprised more than 200 order-entry systems with separate EDI systems-and each unit was doing business on a stand-alone basis. Kodak handled its electronic transactions in batches instead of real-time, forcing customers to wait as long as a day for a response. The decentralized system was expensive, error-prone, and did not have any document-tracking capabilities.
It was time for a change. Kodak wanted to consolidate and integrate internal operations by implementing SAP’s R/3 software. The challenge was to find a system that would reduce infrastructure while connecting SAP applications to its external business partners around the world. Kodak’s solution was GE Information Services’ (GE) Enterprise System.
RAILINC Outsourced Data Operations to GE [LinkAGE / General Electric]
by Hope Katz Gibbs
LinkAGE: News about Electronic Commerce
General Electric
Two years ago, RAILINC was racing to keep up with the growth of the data center that it operates for the members of the American Association of Railroads. RAILINC officials knew just what they needed—a technology upgrade to satisfy the demands of the major North American freight companies.
RAILINC also knew where to find that solution—GE Information Services (GEIS). In October 1997, Jim Gardner, who serves as RAILINC’s vice president and general manager, decided to outsource the center’s day-to-day operations to GEIS.
The results so far are impressive. Gardner says that RAILINC expects to save $2 million to $3 million annually by having GE process its more-than-4-million daily transactions, including settlements, bills of lading, ship notices, and equipment tracing.