Oasis in the Supply Chain Desert...

Online, January 17, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Perceptant (www.perceptant.com), a pioneer of business-to-business integration, open EDI and supply chain software solutions, today announced support for Oasis Universal Business Language (UBL), an open xml standard for B2B messaging that facilitates the exchange of catalogue, pricing, stock and transaction information between buyers and suppliers.

UBL, the Universal Business Language, is the product of an international effort to define a royalty-free library of standard electronic XML business documents such as purchase orders and invoices. Developed in an open and accountable OASIS Technical Committee with participation from a variety of industry data standards organizations, UBL is designed to plug directly into existing business, legal, auditing, and records management practices, eliminating the re-keying of data in existing fax- and paper-based supply chains and providing an entry point into electronic commerce for small and medium-sized businesses.

Perceptant's iHUB, iBAM and SCMaaS (Supply Chain Management as a Service) products leverage XML and incorporate its strengths into a comprehensive business application environment - managing all critical aspects of integrating and automating interactions between customers, partners and suppliers. UBL extends Perceptant's leverage of XML by enhancing the secure electronic management and exchange of catalogue, pricing, stock and transaction information across corporate boundaries.

"Perceptant is dedicated to providing process-level coordination among business partners through its application suite," said Dave Jolliff, CTO of Perceptant Software. "Commonly understood definitions of business information, such as those provided by UBL, allow us to more rapidly deploy solutions in SCMaaS and to focus more energy on process improvements in order management, inventory management and other procurement activities". In SCMaaS, we can construct, execute and manage processes that coordinate the exchange of UML-based objects (as well as other XML objects) among partners and the integration of this information with the business applications like Ariba, SAP and Red Prairie that each partner uses.

Perceptant's support for UBL extends its openness and complements existing support of other business-to-business integration standards, such as VICS Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) and standards efforts led by groups such as CommerceNet, RosettaNet and the Open Applications Group (OAG).

"Competing in today's business environment means being able to rapidly assemble communities of customers and suppliers - big and small - in a way that allows them to function and compete as a single world-class corporation," says Mathew Slinn, CEO of Perceptant. "Perceptant's SCMaaS software allows customers to integrate and automate ordering, forecasting, design and manufacturing processes with their customers and partners - enhancing customer service and retention and reducing product lead times by up to 40%."

The history of UBL

The UBL initiative originated in efforts beginning in mid-1999 to create a set of standard XML "office documents" within OASIS. The work of the OASIS OfficeDoc TC under the leadership of Murray Altheim of Sun Microsystems was set aside when OASIS and UN/CEFACT began collaboration on ebXML in December 1999. Interest in the creation of a standard XML syntax for basic commercial documents revived again in May 2000 with the decision in ebXML to omit a standard XML "payload" syntax from the initial set of ebXML deliverables. The working group that came to be known as UBL began in April 2001 as a discussion group sponsored by CommerceNet and was established as an OASIS Technical Committee in November 2001.

About Perceptant

Perceptant is acknowledged as a leading provider of business-to-business integration applications and patent-pending supply chain management software.

Perceptant SCMaaS (Supply Chain Management as a Service), enables companies to aggressively improve both competitiveness and profitability. Perceptant leverages the Internet and emerging software technologies such as XML to automate shared business interactions throughout entire value chains of companies - including customers, suppliers, distributors, contract manufacturers and third-party logistics providers - that comprise today's extended enterprise.

On the front-end, Perceptant SCMaaS creates and manages mission-critical collaborative business processes such as vendor managed inventory, collaborative planning and engineering, channel assembly and much more. On the back end, iHUB breaks down the barriers of diversity by integrating disparate enterprise applications that often exist between businesses.

For additional information about Perceptant and the Supply Chain, Open EDI and Business Activity Monitoring suite of business-to-business integration software, visit Perceptant's website at www.perceptant.com or contact them directly at +44 (0)1246 291759.