Mitsui selects Sterling Commerce business integration solution for trade-logistics messaging service infrastructure

Sterling Commerce, leading provider of business integration solutions, today announced that Mitsui & Co., Ltd., the largest full-service trade and industrial development company in Japan, has selected Sterling Integrator to develop its Trade-Logistics Messaging Service (TLMS) with the aim of maximising supply chain effectiveness among shippers, carriers, freight forwarders and Customs House Brokers (CHB).

Mitsui is deploying Sterling Integrator as the core technology to support its TLMS, a system designed to monitor and manage electronic transactions. The Sterling Integrator solution will provide the business process, application, and data integration capabilities to increase the overall accuracy, efficiency and effectiveness of the transactions as they are executed beyond the companys four walls.

Sam Starr, president and CEO of Sterling Commerce, said: Integrating information among shippers, carriers and freight forwarders is a challenging task without the right technology solution in place. We are pleased Mitsui selected Sterling Commerce to simplify this task. By acting as a hub to connect and integrate between different trading partners, Sterling Integrator automates and supports activities such as issuing bills of lading and custom clearances.

Yoshibumi Kotsuka, TLMS project manager of Mitsui commented about the key benefits of Sterling Integrator: Sterling Integrator supports not only traditional EDI, but also the latest technology and message types such as BPML, XML, EDIINT (AS1, AS2), RosettaNet, and ebXML. Sterling Integrator is a strategic solution that handles internal integration requirements as well as providing B2B integration that allows TLMS users to collaborate with their trading partners. We were looking for a single platform that could handle both, and we found it with Sterling Integrator.

Kotsuka added that Sterling Integrator will help TLMS users gain additional cost and productivity benefits such as:

Reducing processing costs by eliminating double data entry and reducing operational costs by having one unified integration platform with one common interface

Quickly extending the companys network to flexibly meet the requirements of trading partner communities of all sizes

Increasing transaction accuracy, effectiveness and efficiency while shortening the lead time in the export and import information exchange process.

Kotsuka concluded: Sterling Integrator is a strategic business integration solution used to develop EAI and B2B tools to solve complex business problems, and it supports both systems integration and human interactions as part of a core data exchange system. At Mitsui, Sterling Integrator truly integrates all of our business processes.