The Data Grid

It's About the Information in the Network

An estimated 80% of a company's supply chain data is locked up in the processes and systems of external partners who operate beyond the company's boundaries, on the company's behalf. Order fulfillment, purchase-to-pay, shipment planning and execution — these and hundreds of other business processes are carried out by partners working in their own systems, sometimes without systems, disconnected from the informational flows of the broader value chain.

Business Software Alone is Not Enough

When so much of the data needed to drive business automation is generated and managed by external partners, you need a strategy for acquiring it quickly and cost-effectively to transform it into powerful, reliable business information.

A software system without good data will not deliver.

Data Integration and Standardization is Key

That's why we made global partner data acquisition and standardization a central part of our solution stack.

GT Nexus provides the global integration infrastructure that today connects thousands of logistics service providers and trading partners electronically to the single GT Nexus platform. Each partner connects just once to support multiple — sometimes hundreds — of other trading partners. But more than this, GT Nexus provides the data transformation engines and expert systems to rationalize and mend data based on the business rules and practices of specific partners — which goes well beyond the capabilities of traditional EDI-based Value Added Networks (VANs).

Beyond Traditional VANs

Unlike traditional VANs, which for years now have been used to shuttle data files electronically between trading partners, GT Nexus inserts a rich "logical" layer into the middle of every business exchange to evaluate and standardize the inner data elements of the message. Locations, equipment types, status events, currencies, times and time zones, commodity types — these are just a handful of the data elements that are evaluated and rationalized within each and every data packet to ensure that the data is not only there (complete), but accurate and properly linked.

Partners map their own proprietary formats just once to GT Nexus and can then quickly support standardized business process engagements with any other organization on the GT Nexus platform.

Total Access to Information

If you want to get 100% of the information you need from across your supply chain network and put that information to use, you'll need an integrated data infrastructure and the data engines to accomplish it.

At GT Nexus, that's an integrated part of the overall solution. And the whole solution is delivered as an industry-wide service — in the cloud.