High Point— In separate agreements, North Carolina retail giant Furnitureland South and manufacturer Lexington Home Brands have signed on with Internet company FurnishNet to manage their electronic transactions and data exchanges with their respective trading partners.

High Point-based Furnitureland South is outsourcing its electronic data interchange, or EDI, "to reduce errors on hand-keyed order-entry, accelerate cycle times from order placement to fulfillment, and improve operational efficiency," according to Todd Erickson, director of information technology for the Top 100 srore.

"We evaluated the costs and benefits of building our own solution compared to outsourcing for electronic document exchange," he said. "Electronic document exchange is a function that is simply more cost-effective to outsource."

Erickson said that after speaking with several other FurnishNet retailers with similar numbers of trading partners with EDI connections, Furnitureland South decided to go with FurnishNet because it offers "a stable solution, industry expertise, and a good value."

Lexington has replaced its EDI network with FurnishNet's Internet-based Transaction Management tool.

"Several years ago, our larger retail customers mandated that we build an EDI solution," said Rick Aaronson, director of information technology at Lexington. "But the implementation required a lot of in-house expertise and the network proved very expensive to maintain."

With FurnishNet, Aaronson said Lexington has been able to "reduce staffing costs, eliminate the need for expensive hardware and software upgrades, and spend our IT dollars more effectively."

Lexington's Internet trading partners now include Bon Marché, Burdines, Macy's, Marshall Field's, Nebraska Furniture Mart, Rich's/Lazarus, Rose Furniture and Star Furniture.

FurnishNet's Transaction Management tool is designed to accelerate the transmission of purchase orders and other electronic documents. By integrating e-mail, Web applications, EDI, XML and faxed-based processes, FurnishNet connects trading partners using disparate systems.

According to the GERS company, more than 350 manufacturers and about 50 retailers are connected via the FurnishNet platform and have transacted $1.6 billion in purchase order volume.

Last month, Furnitureland South announced a partnership with Intellitek to develop a dynamic image-rendering system for the retailer's Web site. The system will allow consumers to choose a piece of upholstered furniture and experiment online with different types of fabrics, including making fabric selections for sofa pillows and fringe.

The retailer has made a "huge commitment to online technology," said Jason Harris, executive vice president at Furnitureland South, as is "evident through the applications we have already developed on our site."