Gaithersburg, Md. - June 19, 2006— GXS, a leading provider of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce solutions, today announced winners of its 2006 North American Customer Awards Program.  The program, which recognizes companies making innovative use of GXS’ B2B e-commerce solutions, highlights winners across six separate categories.  GXS North American Customer Award winners include both large enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).  Award categories include “Best Use of GXS Trading Grid to Reduce IT Complexity in B2B e-Commerce” and “Best Use of Trading Grid to Enhance Supply Chain Efficiency.”  The award recipients are Penske Logistics, InFocus Corporation, Nygard International, Herman Kay and Monarch Towel.

Nominees for 2006 GXS Customer Awards were evaluated on a range of criteria by a panel of judges that included Ken Vollmer, senior analyst at Forrester Research; Clive Longbottom, senior director at Quocirca; and Rowland Archer, chief technology officer at GXS.  Entrants were judged on ability to execute complex B2B e-commerce initiatives, enable trading partner participation in supply chain initiatives and enhanced supply chain efficiency enabled through the deployment of the GXS Trading Grid^®.

“In today’s increasingly complex global business environment, companies constantly are challenged to integrate with trading partners, and to streamline their supply and demand chains for greater business process efficiencies,” said Clive Longbottom of Quocirca.  “These awards honor companies that have stood out in their efforts to leverage GXS’ technology and create truly innovative B2B initiatives that impact their businesses’ bottom lines and product delivery times.  These winning companies stand out as models for other businesses to follow.”  
The 2006 North American Enterprise Customer Award Winners and Award Categories were:

• Category: Best Use of GXS Trading Grid to Reduce IT Complexity in B2B e-Commerce – Awarded to the customer that helped mask the complexity of managing varying B2B e-commerce standards, between diverse trading partner communities, that helped simplify the customer or supplier experience.
  
  

  Enterprise Winner:  Penske Logistics – as a leading logistics provider, Penske Logistics manages carriers on behalf of several of the largest U.S. automotive manufacturers.  In doing so, Penske needs to inform carriers of the day and time of arrival at a supplier, items to be picked up, as well as day and time for delivery to the manufacturing plant.  Penske Logistics selected the the GXS B2B Gateway solution to connect to a large customer’s electronic hub, as well as to consolidate communiations into a single, standard gateway—reducing technical complexity and improving results for its customers.
  
  SMB Winner:  Herman Kay Co. Inc. – Herman Kay Co. Inc. is a manufacturer of outerwear for women and men.  Through its use of the GXS Trading Grid, Herman Kay has significantly reduced the complexity of its B2B operations while simultaneously providing expanded capabilities to its trading partner community.  It also received better visibility into inbound and outbound transaction activity by using a single, consolidated service provider.  In addition, through the use of the GXS Global Product Catalog, an electronic product catalogue for retailers and suppliers, Herman Kay has increased trading partner reach and reduced transaction cost.

• Category: Best Use of B2B Outsourcing to Accelerate Competitive Differentiation – Awarded to the customer that best leveraged outsourcing to significantly enhance their customers’ experience, reduce time to market for new products, or to complete projects that would not have been possible otherwise.

InFocus Corporation – InFocus, the industry pioneer and worldwide leader in the projection market, relies on GXS Managed Services as a strategic partner in supporting its B2B e-commerce needs.  InFocus has daily interactions with hundreds of global suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and customers, and has found that relying on GXS Managed Services has proven to be more cost-effective than an in-house, software-based, approach. 

• Category: Best Use of the GXS Trading Grid to Enhance Supply Chain Efficiency – Awarded to the customer that illustrated enhanced supply chain processes, such as forecasting, procurement, logistics, invoicing or payments with quantifiable operational costs savings. 
  
  

  Enterprise Winner: Nygard International– Nygard International, a leading manufacturer of women’s fashion apparel, selected GXS Trading Grid as a key component of its Web-based Retail Fashion Expert (RFX) order system.  Handling paper can be expensive and time consuming, especially when use of electronic commerce is so much more transparent and immediate.  Employees at Nygard that put things down on paper risk a fine of a dollar per page.  As a result of its relationship with GXS and its deployment of e-commerce technology, Nygard has been able to reduce order processing lead times by eight days, reduce buyers’ workload by 75 percent and increase sales by more than 42 percent.
  
  SMB Winner:  Monarch Towel – Monarch Towel is a distributor of high quality robes, towels and slippers, manufactured in Brazil and Turkey and designed primarily for hotel use.  Monarch came to GXS in response to a retailer mandate that required it to establish an electronic document exchange program in a very short period of time.  Upon selecting the GXS Trading Grid to meet its imminent customer needs, Monarch was able to begin conducting B2B e-commerce with global trading partners in less than one day.

GXS also conducted a concurrent Customer Awards program in Europe.  Winners of GXS’ European Customer Awards program are Azertia, Iceland Foods, Osram, Schenker AG, ST Microelectronics and Supply Direct. 

“Recognizing that our customers continue to raise the bar for achieving outstanding B2B integration with their trading partners, we created this program to highlight those companies that went above and beyond traditional B2B e-commerce strategies and executed a truly innovative approach to supply chain management,” said Rowland Archer of GXS.  “The GXS Customer Awards Program demonstrates the business benefits corporations can receive, not only from the GXS Trading Grid, but also from the company’s community enablement and SMB-specific services.” 

The GXS Trading Grid is GXS’ unique global integration platform that enables and streamlines cross-enterprise business processes.  The Trading Grid is the world’s largest electronic business community, used by more than 40,000 trading partners every day to exchange goods and services. As a service-oriented architecture B2B platform, the Trading Grid helps customers automate global trading communities by shielding complexity from rapidly changing standards, eliminating manual and duplicative efforts and enabling a new level of process integration and business intelligence.

GXS is a leading global provider of B2B e-commerce solutions that simplify and enhance business process integration and collaboration. Organizations worldwide, including more than 75 percent of the Fortune 500, leverage the GXS Trading Grid^® to achieve the perfect balance between supply and demand. Active in the global standards arena, GXS enables customers both large and small, to connect with global partners, synchronize product information, optimize inventory levels and demand forecasts and accelerate the execution of supply chains.

Headquartered in Gaithersburg, Md., GXS provides sales and support to businesses and their partners worldwide. For more information, visit our Web site at www.gxs.com.