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Versatility in Cement - versatility in Electronic Trading

08 May 2006

James Hardie, the first name in engineered cement composite (ECC) building products, opts for the last word in 'universal business connectors'.

James Hardie is the latest in a high profile portfolio of companies to sign up to Wesupply.com's OneTime supply chain solutions product - allowing companies to meet electronic trading mandates from their customers without the need to develop, maintain and support an internal integration/mapping solution. The product is web-based and highly configurable growing with the business into a fully collaborative and versatile solution.

James Hardie has a reputation built on durability, versatility and strength in cement-based products. The Company employs over 3000 people and is a global leader with operations in the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines.

Wesupply.com has agreed a standard interface called OneTime between James Hardie and itself which takes care of the translation, delivery and reporting of electronic transactions with James Hardie's trading partners and customers. In other words OneTime takes the raw data from the supplier and translates it into a meaningful format that customers require regardless of the system the supplier may be using. So nothing changes for the supply company whilst the customer's mandate is met.

OneTime optimises on the supplier's existing IT infrastructure and carries a one-off connection charge and an annual subscription fee.

Wesupply.com say that Supply Chain ambiguities are quickly removed and everyone, both supplier and customer, has one common, real-time and unambiguous view of the supply chain. The hosted service is quick to install and requires no hardware, software, database, integration tools or major internal project teams or maintenance. And what is more payback is pretty much immediate with a low risk factor.

"The OneTime solution means that clients like James Hardie no longer have to worry about changes in communication methods with other supply chain participants - they simply connect to Wesupply.com once and we take care of the information flowing between a client and its customers and suppliers", says Stephen Luscombe, Customer and Technical Services Director at Wesupply.com. "Real-time supply chain data can vastly improve internal and external communications and processes which is also good for customer relationships. If you're trading electronically the next stage is to trade collaboratively - OneTime is the first definitive step along the journey".

61% of customers now say that they favour suppliers that are electronically-enabled.

It is clear from a recent report published by notable analysts, Aberdeen Research, that customers are choosing suppliers on the basis of their e-trading skills and it is likely that suppliers will be abandoned if they don't trade electronically.

Against this background Wesupply.com has already attracted a number of high profile customers to OneTime since the revolutionary facility was introduced last year with connections into major builders merchants and multiple DIY outlets.

Many organisations say that when it comes to persuading suppliers to connect to a new supply chain system getting the systems to work is easy - it's persuading the suppliers to agree and buy in to one way of working that's the difficult part. With OneTime such problems don't exist. Customers get the mandate they require and suppliers leverage their existing investment in IT without further software or hardware expenditure.

Over the last year many organisations from the building trade to electronics, from perishable foods to white goods have been mandated to trade electronically with their trading partners and customers. This trend will continue as end user pressure intensifies and competition increases. Supply on demand, real-time supply chain management, offers high rewards for those companies that get it right - the right connection with OneTime means a scalable and configurable product that will grow with the company - into a fully collaborative solution.

If a supplier has multiple customers demanding multiple communication methods which are costly and inefficient then the Wesupply.com OneTime solution could be the answer.

It's obvious that no one can get everything right first time but suppliers can now confront a customer trading mandate with a simple and universal interface.

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