Oracle Teams With UPS To Offer Internet-Based Supply-Chain Services

Oracle Corp. and UPS recently announced a plan to create an integrated shipping-management system that leverages the Internet by providing companies with immediate visibility into their order fulfillment processes. The combination of UPS' Online Tools -- a set of seven transportation and logistics applications -- with Oracle's software applications promises to provide an integrated ERP and shipping system. "Together we plan to develop solutions that will take e-businesses to the next level of ERP and shipping functionality that will streamline their operations and help improve their efficiency by giving them the tools they need to share order fulfillment information throughout their business processes," says Renee Knee, vice president for worldwide alliances at Oracle in Redwood Shores, Calif. UPS vice president of e-commerce marketing Ross McCullough added that the goal of the alliance was "to make it easy and inexpensive for companies to integrate that information into everything in the fulfillment cycle at the front-end from just-in-time inventory to address validation to accounts receivable."