Dr.Mann Pharma Expands Business Reach with GXS; GXS Trading Grid Enhances B2B e-Commerce Capabilities for Bausch & Lomb Subsidiary.

LONDON & GAITHERSBURG, Md. -- GXS, a leading provider of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce solutions, today announced that Dr.Mann Pharma, a Berlin-based pharmaceutical and ophthalmic products manufacturer owned by Bausch & Lomb, has selected the GXS Trading Grid(SM) to improve its ability to communicate with a broader base of trading partners. Dr.Mann Pharma will use the GXS Network Based Translation (NBT) service, a key component of the GXS Trading Grid, as its primary tool for communicating and conducting B2B e-commerce with trading partners. NBT allows businesses to reduce costs and eliminate complexity through the use of a common, single communications solution for communicating with trading partners that use different transfer protocols and data formats for B2B e-commerce and document exchange.

Streamlining trading partner communications will enable Dr.Mann Pharma to grow its business outside of the traditionally-serviced wholesaler market to supply directly to individual physicians and opticians. The company sought a solution that would shield it and its customers from complexity while simultaneously driving value across the business and minimizing costs. GXS provides a visible, reliable and efficient solution to manage Dr.Mann Pharma's increasing transaction volumes, with its growing base of trading partners, who were using multiple data formats to exchange business information. Hosted, on-demand services on the GXS Trading Grid free the customer to focus on core competencies, rather than managing a technical communications infrastructure. As a result, Dr.Mann Pharma is able to focus on new business initiatives and fuel growth by more effectively serving an increasingly varied and burgeoning customer base.

"Wholesalers in the German pharmaceutical industry have a growing customer base of individuals, chemists and pharmacies with whom we communicate directly on a commercial basis," said Christian Schinz, Internet project manager at Dr.Mann Pharma. "The variety of data formats that these customer groups use require translation capabilities to support the creation and growth of a visible and streamlined supply chain. The GXS solution was the obvious choice for us, not just because of GXS' experience in the pharmaceutical industry, but because of its standards-based approach that integrates efficiently with our existing supply chain management solutions."

Choosing to avoid the challenges and commitment of considerable in-house resources by outsourcing data translation to GXS made good sense for Dr.Mann Pharma. GXS Trading Grid enables instant electronic transactions and messaging to, and from, a wide range of formats, including EDI, EDIFACT and XML for a variety of trading documents. In managing the entire automated translation and communication process, the GXS Trading Grid shields companies from complexity while simultaneously maintaining high visibility and indisputable audit trails throughout.

"It is GXS' goal to serve large and small customers jointly and distinctly by helping them maximize business potential through the enablement of more effective trading processes," said Steve Keifer, vice president of industry and product marketing at GXS. "For Dr.Mann Pharma, the expansion of its business activities involves reaching a broader customer base with a wide range of technical capabilities, from basic to the most sophisticated. Such an undertaking, tackled in-house, would demand a large commitment of internal resources. In harnessing the power of the GXS Trading Grid, we allow customers to focus on core business activities and the result is higher performing and more cost-effective management of B2B trading communities."

As an existing member of PHOENIX, the pharmaceutical industry trading community network in Germany and a customer of GXS, Dr.Mann Pharma already has benefited from connections to the GXS Trading Grid. PHOENIX enables the community of wholesalers and manufacturers throughout the entire German pharmaceutical industry to communicate seamlessly and electronically, ensuring visibility and a clear audit trail for all members. Now, manufacturers such as Dr.Mann Pharma can extend their reach directly to new markets, without sacrificing the benefits of PHOENIX.

GXS Trading Grid has enabled large life sciences companies to trade and transact more efficiently, by automating the electronic exchange of purchase orders, shipment documentation and invoices to customers, distributors and suppliers. It also enables firms of any size, regardless of the technical sophistication of its trading partners, to improve trading processes, driving business further and with keener cost implications. GXS credentials in the life sciences industry are strongly established, with 100 percent of the Global 2000 Life Sciences corporations as customers. In addition, GXS also powers the DAFNE exchange in Italy.

The GXS Trading Grid is GXS' unique global integration platform that enables and streamlines cross-enterprise business processes. 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 services-oriented architecture B2B platform, GXS 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.

About Dr.Mann Pharma

Dr.Mann Pharma was founded in October 1945 by Dr. Gerhard Mann and for 41 years was run as a family business. The firm has grown exponentially, expanding in size while offering an ever offering array of products in optical health, surgical and pharmaceutical markets. As a leading firm in the eye-care market, Dr.Mann Pharma pioneered the first eye drop products using a pipette in 1952 and has consistently remained at the forefront of ophthalmic health, medicines and eye-care products. The family firm has since been take over by Bausch & Lomb, the world-leading US manufacturer of technological products for eyes, including contact lenses, surgical instruments, laser equipment and pharmaceuticals. For more information, please visit: http://www.mannpharma.de

About GXS

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(SM) to achieve the perfect balance between supply and demand. Active in the global standards arena, GXS solutions enable 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.

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