REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Nov. 2, 2004 -- Today at Oracle(R) OpenWorld Mumbai, Oracle introduced Oracle Transportation Planning. The new application will help companies manage the entire transportation planning process to reduce costs, improve responsiveness, and drive continuous improvement. The product will be available with Oracle E-Business Suite 11i.10.

"Today's high velocity, high service supply chains require new logistics platforms that better integrate processes across multiple functional and application domains. Unfortunately, many companies still rely on multiple legacy applications with fragmented processes, poor integration, and incomplete visibility," said Dwight Klappich, vice president at META Group, a leading provider of IT research, advisory services and strategic consulting. "Of particular note, given the continuing increases in transportation costs, is the need for comprehensive transportation planning and execution applications integrated with other supply chain applications. With transportation management systems, companies can better optimize load consolidation and carrier selection allowing them to lower costs while improving total logistics through put."

Cut Costs and Improve Customer Service Levels

Oracle Transportation Planning will help companies reduce transportation costs in a variety of ways, including:

-- Optimally combining small shipments into full truckloads with advanced pooling, cross docking, and multi-stop trip capabilities,

-- Determining the lowest-cost carrier for each shipment using actual, detailed tariffs,

-- Identifying cost-efficient continuous moves, which can result in discounts from carriers,

-- Providing specialized search tools to uncover further savings opportunities hidden within logistics data.

Additionally, Oracle Transportation Planning will help enforce a wide variety of business rules and constraints in its optimization process. This will enable companies to improve on time delivery performance and meet other customer requirements. By helping make the entire planning process faster and more efficient, Oracle Transportation Planning will empower planners to address issues, such as customer service, that wouldn't be considered with older planning methods.

Shrink Planning Cycles and Drive Continuous Improvement

Oracle Transportation Planning will help companies shorten every segment of the transportation planning cycle. For example, because its optimized plans will automatically incorporate numerous key business constraints, companies can spend less time identifying and fixing inaccuracies. When adjustments are required, extensive exception alerts will quickly determine areas that need attention. Such capabilities will allow the planning cycle to start closer to the time of execution, enabling planners to work from a more accurate view of demand and reduce re-planning due to late changes. More importantly, shortening the cycle will enable companies to offer immediate responsiveness when customers place or change orders at the last minute.

Oracle Transportation Planning will calculate many key performance indicators, highlighting the effectiveness and efficiency of the planning process. In combination with extensive reports and workflow-enabled exception alerts, these will allow users to target continuous improvement programs and to track their benefits.

"Oracle worked closely with its Customer Advisory Board to help ensure that Oracle Transportation Planning resolves the key pain points in fulfillment processes," said Nadeem Syed, vice president of Advanced Planning, Oracle Corp. "Leveraging Oracle Transportation Planning's optimization capabilities and flexibility, companies can achieve quick, sustainable ROI and continually improve transportation processes."

Comprehensive Planning Visibility and Execution

As part of the Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Transportation Planning is tightly integrated with all of Oracle's fulfillment applications -- Oracle Order Management, Oracle Advanced Pricing, Oracle Configurator, Oracle Transportation Execution, and Oracle Warehouse Management. This will provide virtually seamless, end-to-end planning, collaboration, and performance management across the entire fulfillment process. Because all of the products will share a common definition of key data elements -- including carriers, lanes, rates and facilities, among others -- processes flow smoothly from one product to another. For example, a change in order quantity can be promised in Order Management and instantly planned and released by Oracle Transportation Planning for picking in Oracle Warehouse Management and tendering in Oracle Transportation Execution.

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