Press Release-Mar 15, 2000 IBS/AMERICAS

Introducing integrated customer relations management

Press Release Mar 15, 2000

International Business Systems (IBS), the world leader in supply chain execution software, will demonstrate its new customer relationship management (CRM) software,"ASW Rainbow," at the IBM Global Supply Chain Executive Conference in Las Vegas on March 19.

Built on the Lotus Domino platform, Rainbow is integrated tightly with ASW, the top-selling supply chain and Distribution software from IBS. This integration is the key to Rainbow's success as an efficient CRM solution. Rainbow provides the following CRM components:

ASW Marketing and Sales Support

manages information about prospects, suppliers, media contacts, business partners, competitors and other relations. It also helps plan appointments, manage and follow up on sales processes and handle quotations and sales campaigns

ASW Incident Management

classifies and tracks customer claims and other customer-related issues that need to be settled. It can also handle supplier claims

ASW NetStore

is a web application for product information and order entry. Unlike the other components, which provide real-time data, NetStore sends and receives data in batch. This application is especially useful for handling spare parts

ASW Purchase Support

handles the purchase requisition workflow. Requisitions are created in ASW Purchase Support and, once they are approved, move to ASW. The reverse is also possible: a user can view requisitions that were created in ASW and view them in ASW Purchase Support

ASW Report Connector

lets the user create and view reports using data retrieved from any IBM iSeries (AS/400) document

"The tight integration of Rainbow with the ASW system permits customer data to be updated constantly. In addition," according to Ann-Mari Havel, IBS product manager at the company's Stockholm headquarters,"Once the Domino server is in place, installation, the construction of customer information, sorting preferences and the organization of the notes fields requires only a few days."

Machinery Oy, a Finnish company, has been using a pre-release version of Rainbow since mid-1999, with great success. A 90-year-old trading company with ten separate business units, Machinery Oy needed a customer relationship management system that could capitalize on the synergies created between these units."We decided to implement Rainbow as an add-on to the core ASW application," says Harry Rautianinen, IT Manager of Machinery Oy."This has turned out to be one of the best strategic IT decision we have ever made."

Rainbow will be available and ready to install in April, 2000. It will allow offline use on laptop computers, a major benefit to traveling sales staff."The Domino platform enables replication of ASW data to a computer that is disconnected from the network. Synchronization can be performed whenever the network is accessed again," says Havel of IBS."In fact," she adds,"it is possible even now to use Rainbow offline by replicating data from the server into the laptop and back again."

Contacts:
Alan M. Zachary, PRAXIS/Marketing Communications (312/397-0007)
Ann-Mari Havel, International Business Systems (46-8-627-2582)
David Woodhouse, International Business Systems (916/985-2230)

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