Yantra Mantra: Stronger Presence In Distribution
03/30/2004
Yantra Corporation has announced strategic moves to strengthen its presence in the distribution industry. To drive the company's distribution strategy, Yantra has named industry veteran Jim Caudill as Vice President, Distribution Industry.
Yantra's wholesale distribution customers include SYSCO Corporation, School Specialty Inc., CellStar, Ltd. and ScanSource. Yantra also provides solutions to distribution-intensive consumer goods organizations, including Thomson, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Rockport, and Liz Claiborne Shoes.
"Our recently announced set of reverse logistics management tools, Omnigistics, is a unique interconnected set of services that will provide our customers with enhanced returns management capabilities, including tracking and reporting at every stage of the returns process at the unit (ESN) level, among other benefits," said Chris Smith, senior vice president and general manager of CellStar's U.S. region. "Through Yantra's Master Distribution Suite, our breakthrough reverse logistics solution delivers a sophisticated set of asset recovery management tools turning the supply chain into a distinct competitive advantage for our customers. Yantra's technology, coupled with CellStar's industry leading logistics and distribution capabilities means our customers can now come to a single source for logistics solutions that maximize the total supply chain."
In today's dynamic marketplace, wholesalers and distribution-intensive organizations are experiencing a blend of competitive, economic and technological forces that are causing them to reevaluate how they do business. Yantra says it provides the tools to navigate these unprecedented challenges and enables customers to take advantage of growth opportunities, such as fee-for-service formats, that leverage existing processes and assets. "Yantra offers all companies with distribution-intensive operations the opportunity to leverage economies of scale to reduce operating costs, lower inventory, increase the velocity of goods in the supply chain and increase their capacity to offer newer information-enriched services," the company said.
The Yantra Distribution Suite includes networked order fulfillment and warehouse management, master distribution, integrated supply and global inventory visibility. For distributors, Yantra offers applications for inbound inventory synchronization, networked warehouse management and reverse logistics. Customers can leverage Yantra's Distribution Suite as a comprehensive and integrated offering or as individual solutions to address functional business processes.
"Executives in the distribution industry want to leverage their tried and true processes and best practices, throughout their entire network, to generate returns and stay ahead of the competition," said Ann Grackin, CEO, ChainLink Research. "Yantra's proven solutions and domain expertise based on real-world experience with leading distributors offers the market a solution suite, and benefits, unavailable from niche vendors, larger ERP players or through custom development."
Caudill has spent more than 15 years in the supply chain industry at organizations such as i2, NxTrend/UDS and IMI. Throughout his career, Caudill has achieved a successful track record of driving product strategy while increasing revenues and creating profitable alliances. Reporting to Yantra's senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Michael Grandinetti, who owns Yantra's broad go-to-market strategy, Caudill is responsible for distribution product direction and industry-related marketing initiatives. In addition to the distribution industry, Yantra's core verticals include retail, transportation & logistics and manufacturing.
"Yantra's solutions enable distributors to successfully address specific market challenges by providing a comprehensive set of supply chain execution applications exclusively focused on operational processes that are core to distribution," said Caudill. "Our technology provides distributors with new levels of flexibility to serve customers in the way they want to be served. This ability to increase customer satisfaction, while leveraging existing assets and streamlining process efficiencies, is why Yantra is a required solution for top distributors."