Sterling Integrator enables Austrian national rail operator to improve integration across its internal departments and with other rail traffic companies throughout Europe
London - June 24, 2009 – Sterling Commerce, an AT&T (NYSE:T) company, today announced that ÖBB (Österreichische Bundesbahnen), the Austrian national rail operator, has transformed its business operations and raised service to its customers with the implementation of Sterling Integrator. As a result of centralised process management and integrating previously disparate external/partner systems that data had to traverse, ÖBB is now able to respond more quickly and efficiently to customer demands as well as be more flexible and adaptable to market changes in order to remain competitive.
At ÖBB, transporting goods by rail is a business-critical process where time is the essence. ÖBB’s parent company, ÖBB-Holding AG ÖBB, transports 447 million passengers and 97 million tons of goods each year. To manage and maintain its routine operations and in support of its goal to expand market share in logistics, shipment and passenger transport, ÖBB needed information about trains and train or freight movements to be automatically and securely transferred to its decision-makers in real-time. It therefore needed a solution that would enable secure electronic data exchange with its internal departments and with national and international business partners, across disparate applications and communication technologies. A further requirement of the implementation was the ability to smoothly and easily on-board new business partners.
"Sterling Commerce fully understood our business requirements right from the beginning and quickly emerged as the provider with the best capabilities to meet our needs,” explains Markus Reidlinger, Head of the Interfaces Team at ÖBB-Dienstleistungs GmbH. “We are able to respond quicker to changes in the schedule, keep customers better informed about their journey, as well as enhance the customer experience with new services. Ultimately, this has helped us to increase customer satisfaction.”
Sterling Integrator, a flexible integration platform that provides powerful enterprise and B2B integration capabilities, provides real-time visibility by managing high-volume electronic message exchange, complex routing, translation, and flexible interaction with multiple internal systems and external business partners. It also allows ÖBB’s partners and customers to monitor the status of an operation at any time via a Web-based information portal. Authorisation, authentication and encryption functionality within the solution ensures that anyone who is not authorised to enter the web-based information portal will be refused access and customers can use the portal to acquire real-time updates on the status of their planned journeys. ÖBB also has been able to provide new services to improve the customer experience, for example, data from a regional radio station as well as the Austria Press Agency has been integrated with ÖBB, so that customers can hear and read the latest news updates too.
The solution has also achieved significant operational cost savings for the company as, previously, any change or additional option to the data had to be implemented using a service provider, but now data can be updated automatically at no additional cost. The central configuration of Sterling Integrator has enabled partners to be easily integrated into the system without the need for any additional programming. Of a total of approximately 1,500 partners, over 350 have already been integrated by the new solution.
“In the fiercely competitive logistics market, every supplier is looking for new ways of leveraging IT to provide better and more secure service for their customers,” comments Ronald Teijken, Manufacturing and Logistics Industry Executive EMEA, Sterling Commerce. “We are pleased that we have been able to support ÖBB in its vision to becoming one of the top railways in Europe. It is companies like ÖBB - those who recognise the importance of customer service and positioning for future growth in these difficult economic times - that will be in the strongest position when the upturn begins.”
Sterling Integrator is part of Sterling Business Integration Suite, a complete solution for all integration needs inside and outside the enterprise. To assist companies in achieving seamless internal and B2B systems integration, Sterling Commerce has launched a series of video Guides to Business Integration.
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About Sterling Commerce
Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc (NYSE:T) company, Sterling 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.co.uk
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