AT&T and Sterling Commerce Enable Saint-Gobain to Transform Its Customer and Supplier Relationships

VALLEY FORGE, Pa., March 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AT&T* and Sterling Commerce today announced that the Saint-Gobain Corporation, a building materials manufacturer and distributor, has purchased Sterling Business Integration Suite from AT&T.  Saint-Gobain will use Sterling Business Integration Suite to integrate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and automate business processes among its customers and suppliers to achieve enhanced productivity, improved supply chain management and a stronger competitive edge.

The Saint-Gobain Corporation, an entity of the Saint-Gobain Group, manufactures a range of building products, high-performance materials and glass containers and is a distributor of building materials with 330 locations throughout the United States. Its business depends on a complex network of disparate systems and processes through which it delivers high quality building products.

Saint-Gobain will utilize the integration-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings in Sterling Business Integration Suite as the communications standard among its U.S. business divisions and with the company's network of customers and suppliers to automate the exchange of business documents -- such as purchase orders, acknowledgements and invoices -- in EDI, XML or flat-file formats. As a result, the company expects to:

• Improve overall cycle times from order to payment,  
• Facilitate on-time delivery to its customers, and  
• Optimize its supplier relationships by utilizing real-time reports to monitor and analyze supplier performance and enforce service level agreements (SLAs)  

Sterling Business Integration Suite provides connections to over 90 other public and private networks and more than 280,000 established trading pairs. It automates costly manual business processes by eliminating paper-based transactions and providing end-to-end visibility and control over Saint Gobain's internal and business-to-business (B2B) processes. It also consolidates information from each division's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to enable the company to gain a complete view of inventory. Saint-Gobain's abrasives business division leverages these capabilities in a fully managed environment to outsource their B2B process management activities at far less cost and resource utilization than doing them in-house operations.  

"By partnering with AT&T and Sterling Commerce, Saint-Gobain is gaining the power of community, a critical resource in today's challenging business climate, which can be used to dramatically improve a company's competitive position by increasing supply chain responsiveness, lowering operating costs and reducing inventory risks," said Richard Douglass, Global Manufacturing Industry Executive, Sterling Commerce.  

AT&T and Saint-Gobain have a long-standing relationship whereby AT&T has been providing the company with wireless services, wide-area network (WAN) and WAN-based services, and now e-commerce applications and services. Based on the success in the U.S., Saint-Gobain plans to implement these solutions on a global basis.  

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

About Sterling Commerce

Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) company, helps companies optimize and transform their Business Collaboration Network to accelerate revenues and reduce costs. More than 30,000 customers worldwide use Sterling Commerce applications and integration solutions to connect, communicate and collaborate inside and outside their enterprise. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Sterling Commerce has offices in 24 countries. More information can be found at www.sterlingcommerce.com.

About AT&T

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is a premier communications holding company. Its subsidiaries and affiliates – AT&T operating companies – are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation's fastest 3G network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high speed Internet and voice services. AT&T offers the best wireless coverage worldwide, offering the most wireless phones that work in the most countries. It also offers advanced TV services under the AT&T U-verse(SM) and AT&T | DIRECTV(SM) brands. The company's suite of IP-based business communications services is one of the most advanced in the world. In domestic markets, AT&T's Yellow Pages and YELLOWPAGES.COM organizations are known for their leadership in directory publishing and advertising sales. In 2009, AT&T again ranked No. 1 in the telecommunications industry on FORTUNE® magazine's list of the World's Most Admired Companies. Additional information about AT&T Inc. and the products and services provided by AT&T subsidiaries and affiliates is available at http://www.att.com.

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SOURCE AT&T Inc.