The Hillman Group Achieves 'Electronic Edge' With Sterling Commerce B2B Collaboration Services

COLUMBUS, OH--(Marketwire - September 8, 2008) - Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) subsidiary, today announced that The Hillman Group -- the market leader in distributing hardware, letters, numbers and signs, keys and accessories and engraving technologies -- has completed an important milestone in its implementation of Sterling Commerce Managed Services (SCMS). The Hillman Group has standardized its business-to-business (B2B) collaboration processes, finalized a repeatable process for on-boarding partners, and completed the conversion of all the major documents it exchanges with suppliers to SCMS. The company also has completed the first three phases of implementation, achieving its goal to have 80 percent of its partners on the new service within a year.

SCMS manages for The Hillman Group's B2B collaboration infrastructures, networks and processes in their entirety. SCMS takes care of exchanging data securely with The Hillman Group's partners, regardless of data format and communications protocols, allowing the company to focus on its business. SCMS provides the people and processes to ensure all documents exchanged with The Hillman Group's customers and partners are delivered on-time, to eliminate or reduce the company's risk of order, price and invoice errors that result in returned products, unpaid invoices or write-offs, customer service inefficiencies and a high cost of sales.

"We believe the future measure of our success will be the ability to respond rapidly to ever-changing customer requirements. This will require us to blend the best of big and small, becoming large and efficient internally while remaining small and flexible in the eyes of the customer," said Jim Honerkamp, chief information officer at The Hillman Group. "Sterling Commerce, with its extensive EDI expertise and deep B2B communications capabilities, was the partner that gave us an 'electronic edge' over our competitors. By outsourcing our B2B integration processes to Sterling Commerce, we've accelerated our ability to collaborate better with both our customers and partners, and be more agile in meeting new demands."

SCMS is enabling The Hillman Group to meet the demand for growing volumes of electronic B2B collaboration with customers and partners without the need to maintain and update an internal B2B integration infrastructure or add internal resources. Its customers, such as Lowe's, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart, are demanding more information in tighter timeframes. They also are moving toward industry standards such as global data synchronization. By standardizing processes with SCMS, the company can respond faster to these new demands. Now that most of its suppliers are online, the company can provide transaction information to the business owners who manage customer relationships, enabling them to make quicker and more informed business decisions.

"With 80 percent of its trading partners electronically enabled, The Hillman Group has achieved a best-in-class B2B collaboration capability," said Richard Douglass, global manufacturing industry executive at Sterling Commerce. "This implementation demonstrates how manufacturers can leverage managed services to achieve a better B2B operation for less cost than in-house operations and to outpace their competition by using supply chain agility and adaptability as a differentiator."

Sterling Commerce provides The Hillman Group with a complete solution for its B2B collaboration activities. In addition to SCMS, The Hillman Group is leveraging Connect:Direct for point-to-point file transfer, Sterling Collaboration Network as the on-demand B2B integration and process visibility technology backbone, and Sterling Hosted Solution for Data Sync to ensure UCCnet/ECCnet compliance.

About Sterling Commerce

Sterling Commerce, a subsidiary of AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), helps customers thrive in a global economy by connecting their business communities, processes, people and technology. More than 30,000 customers worldwide -- including 80 percent of the Fortune 500 -- use Sterling Commerce solutions for business process integration, multi-channel selling, and supply chain fulfillment to improve profitability inside and outside their company walls. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Sterling Commerce has offices in 19 countries and most major cities around the world. More information on the company can be found at www.sterlingcommerce.com.

Contact Information: For more information, contact: Julie Redard Sterling Commerce (978) 513-6386 Jamie Leicht Fleishman-Hillard (619) 237-7711