Sterling Commerce Seeing Retail Customers Turn to Order Management Solutions to Enable Cross Channel Behaviors and Improve Customer Satisfaction

COLUMBUS, OH--(Marketwire - November 17, 2009) - Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc (NYSE: T) company, today announced that in spite of a challenging year for the U.S. and global economy, the company has seen increased interest from major retailers for solutions that enable cross-channel optimization resulting in the ability to deliver greater customer satisfaction and a better shopping experience to consumers. A major part of this trend is to attain competitive differentiation by enabling a seamless cross-channel customer experience, and Sterling Commerce enjoyed several million-plus dollar sales in Q3 of Sterling Order Management, part of Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite, which provides retailers with market-leading capabilities to manage this experience.

"Best-of-breed retailers gain market share through innovation, and in a post-recession environment where the battle for the business and loyalty of more choosy consumers will be fierce, having state-of-the-art order management processes and systems that provide consumer choice across channels is necessary for retailers to effectively compete," said Jim Bengier, Retail Industry executive at Sterling Commerce. "The fact that we recently closed multiple million-plus dollar deals with some of the largest retailers in the industry -- including leaders in businesses ranging across mass merchant, specialty and home improvements -- indicates that retailers across the board are beginning to 'get' this and as a result are investing in Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite."

With a customer list that includes eight of the world's top ten retailers, Sterling Commerce recent wins include large deals with six new Fortune 500 retailers. These retailers invested in Sterling Order Management, as well as other solutions from Sterling Commerce, to offer more customer touch points (channels) to deliver value and address key cross-channel challenges such as:

-- Optimizing inventory across all channels

-- Providing greater customer information and resolution flexibility to store associates

-- Offering visibility and control to all relevant associates to the entire end-to-end customer order lifecycle

-- Reducing complexity in the 'build-to-order' process including the scheduling and management of delivery, installation and service-through internal and third-party vendors

-- Enabling flexible fulfillment for all orders irrespective of the channel or brand where the order was captured

-- Making accurate inventory available-to-promise, fulfillment sourcing, and end-to-end order management recommendations

-- Enabling extensive drop ship capabilities

"Gaining and maintaining customer loyalty will be the name of the game coming out of the recession," said Bengier, "and some of our retail customers are telling us that the technology we provide will be a 'game changer' for them in meeting customer demand for cross-channel purchasing and fulfillment."

Sterling Order Management orchestrates global order and service fulfillment across the extended enterprise to help companies improve cross-channel optimization and customer responsiveness. Key differentiating capabilities of Sterling Order Management include its intelligent sourcing engine that helps to reduce costs by determining the most efficient and least costly location to fulfill an order, and a process modeling engine that reduces time-to-value by providing the flexibility to model and manage processes shared across the extended enterprise. Sterling Order Management is part of Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite, a collaborative supply chain solution for managing the entire inquiry-to-cash process.

"All of these retailers are responding by investing in solutions as a way to secure their future success," added Bengier. "Focused on enhancing customer satisfaction as a way to provide differentiation from their competitors, the retailers now have more ways (channels) to use as touch points to the customer to deliver value to the customer."

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. Sterling Commerce provides more than 30,000 customers worldwide applications and integration solutions to connect, communicate and collaborate inside and outside their enterprise. More information can be found at www.sterlingcommerce.com.

Contact Information: For more information, contact: Julie Redard Sterling Commerce (978) 513-6386 Julie_Redard@stercomm.com Jamie Leicht Fleishman-Hillard (619) 237-7711 jamiemarie.leicht@fleishman.com