Crossroads 2002 A-List Award Winners

Arzoon, Inc.
San Mateo, CA

Arzoon LIFE
> Inter-enterprise Logistics Management

CUSTOMERS AT WORK

Global 2000 firms spend 5 percent to 15 percent of revenues managing domestic and international logistics. Arzoon’s customers are intent on reducing costs while improving execution. Reference customers included a consumer electronics manufacturer, a contract manufacturer, and three transportation service providers. Common strategic objectives included:

§ Increasing supply-chain visibility

§ Improving import-export compliance

§ Virtualizing inventory

§ Optimizing transportation management

WHY ARZOON?

Arzoon provides visibility and control by unifying three core logistics processes: transportation, international trade, and inventory visibility. Arzoon applies a single Web-native application infrastructure to a set of previously paper-based manual processes. Using Arzoon LIFE, companies and their trading partners use a single hub to automate logistics, manage exceptions, and create real-time visibility and long-term audit trail. By streamlining cross-border trade and reducing the opportunity for errors to interrupt the flow of goods, companies leverage Arzoon LIFE to improve time to market and customer service.

BUSINESS IMPACT

Near-term value: Arzoon’s customers reported single-digit or low double-digit percentage reductions in three areas: transportation spend, process costs, and regulatory compliance.

Enterprise innovation: Companies use Arzoon to establish a consistent process for interacting with trading partners—customers, suppliers, freight forwarders, customs brokers, distributors, and carriers—across all of their distinct operations. In today’s world, this combination of digital collaboration and accountability allows companies to shorten cash cycles, leverage preferred providers, and respond to regulatory audits.

Technology gains: Arzoon’s Web-based offering allows IT departments to automate processes previously supported by spreadsheets, phone calls, and point applications without spending millions on application development, implementation, and capital equipment. Teams are not only automating the basic transactions via Arzoon’s business rules but also establishing alert and notification policies for event management. With this foundation, current customers are getting ready to make Arzoon their standard means of conducting logistics activities. One company plans on eventually migrating more than 5,000 suppliers to the service.

SUCCESS FACTORS

Project strategy: Global logistics and trade create many unique regulatory and pricing constraints. Current customers stressed that defining and configuring the business rules for the Arzoon service was the most critical step in the overall project.

Learning: Arzoon requires suppliers to connect via EDI or a Web-based GUI. Internal and external users find the Arzoon system accessible and easy to use. Almost all companies are educating their trading partners and, for business reasons, slowly scaling their efforts with Arzoon.

Resources: In some cases, the most significant customer effort required was the remediation of product data catalogs across multiple business units.

Fit: Global companies with multimodal, multinational supply chains will find Arzoon a valuable addition to their logistics activities.

COMPANY INFO

Arzoon, Inc. is a privately held company with 100 employees.

650.995.6000
www.arzoon.com
Published: January 2002