Cleveland-based KeyCorp is one of the nation’s largest bank-based financial services companies. With assets of approximately $88.6 billion, Key companies provide investment management, retail and commercial banking, retirement, consumer finance, and investment banking products and services to individuals and companies throughout the United States and, for certain businesses, internationally. The company’s businesses deliver their products and services through KeyCenters and offices; a network of approximately 2,200 ATMs; telephone banking centers and a Key.com. WHY INTEGRATION? The enterprise architecture division at KeyBank delivers technology recommendations to facilitate the development of a strategic IT architecture. The group recognized the value of integration technology to streamline a number of business processes and achieve operational efficiencies. The goal was to leverage a services oriented architecture (SOA) platform to build applications cheaper and quicker, and respond to business changes more effectively. Read More...

Quixtar Inc., a subsidiary of Alticor Inc., offers entrepreneurs the ability to have a Web-based business of their own. Since 1999, independent business owners powered by Quixtar have generated more than $5.2 billion in sales at www.quixtar.com, plus more than $396 million for Partner Stores. Quixtar is the industry’s 20th largest online retailer and the overall leader within the health and beauty category, according to Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide. Some of Quixtar’s wellrecognized product brands include NUTRILITE® nutritional supplements and ARTISTRY® skin care and cosmetics. CHALLENGE With a business model focused on interfacing closely with numerous suppliers, seamless interaction is mandatory to support customer sales. While Quixtar’s catalog product system and legacy purchasing system were critical to its operations, managing the product and order process was slow and costly to maintain, with product and order updates taking two to three days to process. Further, catalog planners received product updates only during an overnight batch process and did not have access to real-time receipts or inventory updates. Quixtar was therefore keen to replace its costly legacy purchasing system and integrate its catalog product applications with its ERP Supply Chain software (JD Edwards®) to easily maintain information on suppliers, items, pricing, inventory, and purchase orders. Read More...