SummaTG | Summa Technology Group, Inc.

SummaTG Announces the Appterra Business Collaboration Suite

calsmiller — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:13:30 +0000

Today SummaTG is proud to announce the availability of the Appterra Business Collaboration Suite. Appterra is the next generation of B2B commerce technology a sophisticated SAAS platform that’s been under development by SummaTG for over 2 years and is based on a history of over 12 years of day-to-day management of complex multi-enterprise collaboration and cloud application services for our customers.

“This product represents the application of leading edge next-generation technology to a very old problem, collaborating with suppliers, counterparties and customers” said Charlie Alsmiller, CEO of SummaTG. “Our decision to market the solution under the Appterra brand reflects our ongoing commitment to a global community of trading partners, which leverage our systems daily to extend their business beyond the enterprise”.

The Appterra solutions leverage our existing capabilities to deliver private trading hubs in the cloud, but also allow for inter-hub connectivity and the ability to route transactions and documents to any member of the existing ECOutlook/SummaTG network.

Existing customers will be unaffected by this introduction, but should consider the implications of an upgrade – which will provide better visibility, performance and flexibility for their needs. Contact us for details.

Over One-Third of Survey Respondents Report Using Non-Secure Protocols for their B2B Integration

calsmiller — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 21:33:45 +0000

In a recent survey conducted by Summa Technology Group Inc, over 93% of respondents reported they currently or plan to conduct business electronically with their trading partners.

As B2B integration specialists, this fact does not surprise us. What DOES surprise us is the fact that one third (32.2 % of respondents) use insecure FTP connections to transfer critical inter-company commerce. Even more stunning is the number of companies (over 50%) reporting the use of insecure HTTP connectivity.

With increasing security breaches happening in many companies, and additional federal, local and other regulatory requirements, we consider this to be a high risk area for most of our customers and trading network members. While B2B commerce has evolved in many directions over the last ten years, the use of insecure technology must be addressed.

SummaTG now offers vulnerability scanning as a managed service for our customers. SummaTG will regularly scan, attempt penetration and validate your various B2B connections on a regular basis.

For the first 100 respondents, SummaTG will conduct a FREE vulnerability scan of your B2B connectivity, including your comms, web and other methods. All registrations must be received by SummaTG by 01/10/2012 in order to qualify.

Integrated Supply Chain Collaboration

calsmiller — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:31:51 +0000

Connect with your trading partners in the cloud. Extend your enterprise applications to create a reliable and secure B2B commerce community.

SummaTG provides services that integrate your business systems with those of your business partners, whether they be customers, suppliers, or multiple internal business units. Our Connect Once, Reach Any model of business integration allows a company and their trading partners to exchange information, while avoiding intrusive integration requirements. We connect once to your business system or systems, and then take care of the disparate requirements of your trading partners. We provide your trading partnsers with a variety of integration alternatives to allow seamless exchange of business data.

Core Integration Platform The core of our integration services is provided by our proprietary B2B integration platform called Collaboration Center

Integrated Order Management

SummaTG Admin — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:01:19 +0000

The SummaTG Order Management Solution automates the order-to-cash cycle with your customers (sell-side) or the purchase-to-pay cycle with your suppliers (buy-side). Standard document types are available, along with a library of over 300 common business rules. These business rules can be configured by trading partners and document type to match your current or desired business processes.

A feature rich access portal provides users with a versatile and easy-to-use interface for creating, sending, and viewing documents. The product offers your trading partners three connectivity options:

web portal
file upload/download
automated system-to-system integration

SummaTG’s Order Management Solution drives significant ROI benefits by enabling rapid, cost-effective transaction management with 100% of your trading partners. From strategic procurement to settlement, Summa TG’s Order Management Solution can enable, execute and manage virtually every step of the order-to-cash or purchase-to-pay process with your suppliers, customers, and financial services partners.

Standard Document Types	Standard Processes
Purchase Order Purchase Order Change Material Release Acknowledgement Advance Ship Notice Certificate of Analysis Invoice Goods Receipt Credit Memo Payment Instruction Remittance Advice	Rejected PO Support Paper to Web Process Blanket and Scheduled Orders Workflow (Approval Routing) Bar Code Shipping Labels End-to-End Document Tracking Functional Acknowledgements Document Attachments VAT Invoices Multi-Language Support Multi-Currency Support

Contact SummaTG today to learn how our Order Management Solution can help your business increase revenue, lower operating costs, and automate business processes.

Cloud B2B Integration

SummaTG Admin — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:55:57 +0000

The SummaTG B2B Integration Hub application provides data translation, transformation, and transportation between two or more business partners. Our Connect Once, Reach Any model of business integration allows a company and their trading partners to exchange information, while avoiding intrusive integration requirements.

Our services support a broad array of communications alternatives (e.g. SFTP, HTTPS, AS2, VAN) and data translation needs (e.g. EDI, XML, IDOCS, Flat File).

All SummaTG solutions are delivered as a hosted services model (SaaS). That means there is no software to purchase, install, or maintain. We provide the hardware, software, network security, and system monitoring necessary to maintain your trading network 24x7x365. Our service may be provided on a pay-as-you-go basis, to accelerate your project’s ROI.

The following solutions form a suite of collaborative value chain applications:

Supported Formats

File or message based integration
We can support ANY format that has a well-defined structure

Common formats:

EDI (X12, EDIFACT, NAESB)
SAP IDOC or XML
Oracle ERP XML
XML Standard (CIDX, cXML)
RosettaNet
Custom XML
Flat files (Comma-delimited, positional, etc.)

Broad set of communication methods

FTP/SFTP
HTTP/HTTPS
SMTP
AS2
MQ Series
VPN
EDI-INT compliant packages
VAN Mailbox/VAN Interconnect
BizTalk

Multiple security options

VPN
PGP
EDI-INT compliant packages
Other / Custom

The Last Mile: Energy Integration Whitepaper

The 2011 Integration Survey Results are available now

calsmiller — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:14:26 +0000

SummaTG 2011 Integration Trends Survey Results

Click Here to Download

View more documents from Summa Technology Group, Inc.

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Customer Success Stories

SummaTG Admin — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 03:21:18 +0000

Throughout the years, SummaTG has developed outstanding B2B solutions for our clients. Here, we’ve collected some of our memorable case studies and solutions that will help your company become more efficient and realize more ROI than ever before. Learn how our B2B Integration Hub is being used by some of the top 500 fortune companies to keep their global supply chain strong. Just sign in below and we’ll give you access to resources that will help your company grow!

SummaTG solutions have been deployed by companies in a variety of industries for managing and automating business processes. Since no two companies do business the same, our solutions are configurable to match your specific situation. There are, however, some things that are consistent across all of our customer solution deployments:

They are mission critical
They were deployed in as little as 60 days
They typically returned an ROI in 8 to 12 months
They receive customer support that is second to none

Eastman Kodak Company Rochester, NY

Problem	Vendor base becoming more global Purchasing and invoice reconciliation processes very manual Vendors unable to conform to desired bar code labeling
Solution	SummaTG Order Management application
Results	1,500 vendors deployed globally 300,000 orders and 200,000 invoices processed annually 90% of invoices successfully post on first pass All inbound shipments have common bar coded shipping label

Womack Machine Supply Dallas, Texas

Problem	Customers and Vendors demands for electronic trading Complexity and cost of deploying solution internally
Solution	SummaTG Order Management application
Results	Integration to Womack’s trading partner community is automated and simpified

Tronox Chemicals Oklahoma City, OK

Problem	No visibility to customer usage, demand required expedites High-value product tied up capital in inventory Differentiating commodity product with customers
Solution	SummaTG Inventory and Forecast Visiblity applications
Results	Successful vendor managed inventory (VMI) program with key customers Marked reduction in required inventory levels Customer retention and increased market share Higher switching costs for competitive suppliers

BASF Chemicals Florham Park, NJ

Problem	High customer call levels asking about order status Customer reluctance to use self-service web portal
Solution	SummaTG Transportation Visibility application
Results	Customers emailed when orders ship Email contains latest shipment status information from carrier Reduction in call volume to customer service group

Contact Summa today to learn how we have successfully deployed collaborative software solutions for customers in a variety of industries and business settings.

SummaTG adds Trustweaver eInvoice digital signatures for our European Customer Base

Sometimes we’re better off the less we do

calsmiller — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:05:30 +0000

By Charlie Alsmiller, CEO SummaTG – 11/16/2011

In 1999, I was named CEO of a venture backed startup. I really had no business in this role, but at the time, I was probably the best choice. We recruited a great board of directors and attracted top investors. One of my favorite pieces of advice came from our chairman, a wise man with many years working with young bucks just like me. He simply said: “You’ll be more effective the less you do”. Those words have stuck with me like you would not believe over the years. It’s true in so many areas of our lives. Many times, we’re are better off spending our time training others to “fish” for themselves rather than do the fishing for them.

I’ve been thinking this week about the 80/20 rule in our business. The Pareto principle (e.g. the 80/20 rule) is seen in many aspects of our lives.

The distribution shows up in several different aspects relevant to entrepreneurs and business managers. For example:

80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers
80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers
80% of your profits come from 20% of the time you spend
80% of your sales come from 20% of your products
80% of your sales are made by 20% of your sales staff

In fitness,

80% of your results come from 20% of your effort (the last 20%)
80% of your calories come from 20% of the “bad” food you eat
80% of your health issues come from a smaller, 20% of “bad” behaviors

Therefore, many businesses and people have an easy access to dramatic improvements in profitability and personal performance by focusing on the most effective areas and eliminating, ignoring, automating, delegating or re-training the rest, as appropriate.

Many of our potential customers are either doing their own B2B integration or considering it. Why ? It doesn’t contribute to your 80%. We will handle it for you. How many other things are you doing today that you would be better off delegating ?

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Compliant ≠ Secure

calsmiller — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 01:52:35 +0000

By Brian Eckert, Director of Security Services, SummaTG

Many companies believe that if they are compliant then they must be secure. Not true. Just like your kids at school who are now required to pass standardized tests to graduate; they are taught to the test not to a standard. In other words, all that matters is passing the test not necessarily learning the subject. Don’t get me wrong, compliance is important and almost all of them are based on one of the leading security standards such as NIST or ISO20001. The issue is that each one is focused on a certain area. For example, PCI is focused on protecting the cardholder environment. If the environment does not process, transmit or store cardholder data then it’s out of scope. Most companies focus on ways to minimize the scope. They segregate their cardholder data, turn off wireless access, minimize the number of people who have access and anything else they can do to narrow the scope. This is great but what about the rest of their environment? Oh and let’s not forget that if you are a publicly traded company you also have to comply with SOX, which has a different focus. However, if you applied one of the security standards to your whole environment then you are most likely going to comply with most compliance standards since most regulatory requirements are based on accepted security standards. Our focus should be on protecting the data as the number one priority. Develop a sound security methodology that is based on an accepted standard and implement across your infrastructure. If you are not sure how to do it then get help. It’s always cheaper to be proactive than reactive.

Are you the weak link in your company’s security plan ?

calsmiller — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:18:39 +0000

By Brian Eckert, Director Security Services, SummaTG

Your company’s security posture is only as strong as your weakest link. Just like a chain with a weak link, if you have spent time and resources to build up your defenses they are only as strong as the weakest one. In most cases, that is your employees. When doing Attack and Pen Testing for companies we always used Social Engineering as the easy way to get in. I have been able to get into data centers, trading floors, the CIO mailbox, routers, servers; all without even hacking into the systems because I was always able to find someone to give me the information. How did I do that you ask? I made employees believe I was an IT Admin who needed their password. Most employees don’t realize that system admins don’t need your password – EVER. Security Awareness Training can be one of the cheapest and most effective forms of defense. If Employees are effectively trained they can actually be one of the strongest links in your companies’ security chain.

Summa announces new Security-as-a-Service Offerings

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