Agilera, a leading full-service pure-play ASP, Tuesday (Jan 23) announced a partnership with Frontstep Inc. (Nasdaq:FSTP), a leading provider of business systems for mid-sized distributors and manufacturers.
As part of this agreement, Agilera will sell the Frontstep E-business Suite as a hosted solution to enable its customers to achieve supply chain synchronization and the coordination and integration of trading partners, suppliers and distributors.
“This partnership strengthens Agilera’s manufacturing offering by leveraging Frontstep’s mid-market experience and proven technology expertise to provide clients with an effective e-business strategy and vision,” said Eric Murphy, Agilera executive vice president of business development. “Through our partnership with Frontstep, we deliver a first-rate e-business suite that synchronizes information and transactions across the supply chain and among trading partners through a hosted extended enterprise.”
Efficient supply chain management requires synchronized, universal access to information by connecting trading partners and multiple manufacturing sites. Frontstep has developed networked applications that enable Internet-based collaboration for order promising and fulfillment. Frontstep’s supply chain solution links a company’s manufacturing sites, distributors and suppliers to provide real-time promise dates at order entry and to automatically reserve inventory at order acceptance.
With trading partners connected digitally, the entire supply chain can operate more efficiently — with less inventory and more responsiveness to customer demand. Companies can also manage last-minute orders and a higher volume of smaller orders without sacrificing efficiency, thus driving profits and customer satisfaction.
Agilera will deploy the Frontstep E-business Suite in a technical architecture developed in conjunction with Frontstep to facilitate integration with other hosted applications. This extension of the built-in integration capabilities of the Frontstep E-business Suite will further streamline integration for customers using other enterprise applications hosted by Agilera. In this way, Frontstep’s supply chain solution can link manufacturers, distributors and suppliers that use a variety of back-end systems.
“Agilera is a recognized leader in application hosting, and we are pleased they have chosen Frontstep’s supply chain solution,” said Stephen A. Sasser, president and CEO of Frontstep. “This partnership combines our inclusive approach to supply chain collaboration with Agilera’s pragmatic deployment alternative, enabling manufacturers to bring more partners into the automated supply chain.”
With more than 4,000 customers worldwide and over 20 years of industrial experience, Frontstep is a leading global provider of e-business, supply chain and enterprise management software for mid-sized distributors and manufacturers. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Frontstep delivers a comprehensive suite of software and services, including enterprise management, CRM, online customer sales and service, web-driven channel management, supply chain management and e-procurement.
