Tempe, AZ December 6, 2001 The holiday season is upon us, which means solution providers have just 16 shopping days before the end of the year to roll out their latest product offerings in time to include them in annual reports to investors and shareholders.
Here's a look at the latest news from (in alphabetical order) Camstar, ePlus, Escalate, MatrixOne, Tilion and Verilytics.
· Speed is the key for Camstar Systems.
The Campbell, Calif.-based provider of solutions for collaborative manufacturing, released new industry-targeted toolsets that allow enterprise more quickly implement the company's InSiteLive and Virtual Factory Suite solutions. Camstar says that faster deployments should allow enterprises in the semiconductor, optical electronics, medical devices and electronic assembly fields to more rapidly see a return on their investment in Camstar solutions. The provider says its offerings can enable faster and more accurate inventory control, rapid and centralized changes to customer orders, efficient capacity management and the improvement of yields across the distributed supply chain.
· ePlus is not content with the state of e-catalog content.
The e-content solution provider this week rolled out its ePlus Content Framework, which it describes as an open and extensible schema for the creation and management of e-commerce-enabled product catalogs. Herndon, Va.-based ePlus says that companies adopting the framework should be able to quickly create online catalogs organized around a user-friendly table of contents. The framework contains more than 44,000 pre-defined product classifications and enables users to match their business requirements by adding to or modifying the existing structure.
· Escalate is ratcheting up the bar for distributed order management.
This provider of enterprise-class, order-centric applications this week launched the latest version of its distributed order management technology, Escalate XOM 4.0. The solution is designed to execute a large volume of complex orders as the system-of-record or to broker order information between front-end order capture and back-office enterprise resource planning or order-management systems. In either case, Redwood Shores, Calif.-headquartered Escalate says, XOM provides a common platform for orders across multiple channels, divisions and partners, and the technology provides real-time order lifecycle visibility and decision support across multiple divisions and business units, as well as external partners.
· MatrixOne wants to ManageYourProgram.
The Westford, Mass.-based provider of product collaboration solutions this week released ProgramManagement Central, software designed to let companies manage programs and projects that span multiple organizations, suppliers and partners. MatrixOne says that the new solution directly links business processes to live product information, which means that the software gets updated automatically as tasks and deliverables are completed, allowing everyone in the value chain to identify emerging issues in their earliest stage, thus avoiding the cost of delayed response and remediation. Automated status reporting also frees users to focus on their value-adding work. The end result, the solution provider says, should be shortened product development cycles, increased market share, reduced development costs and risks, increased margins and improved return on assets.
· Tilion has all the real time in the world.
This logistics and supply chain solution provider, based in Maynard, Mass., unveiled its Solutions for Inbound Freight, a Web-based logistics service designed to provide real-time supply chain data to logistics managers with the goal of allowing enterprises to consolidate shipments, streamline inbound deliveries and reduce freight costs. The solution uses data collected from existing enterprise systems throughout the supply chain to provide greater control over inbound shipments, says Tilion, which predicts that the service could cut premium freight costs by 30 percent and total inbound freight costs by 15 percent in just 90 days.
· Verilytics aims to leave very little to chance in the supply chain.
The Burlington, Mass.-based supply chain software provider this week launched its Supply Chain Manager software, which the company describes as a business execution solution for both operational and management professionals in manufacturing organizations. Verilytics says the solution provides real-time access to disparate data sources across both internal and external systems. User-driven rules and analytics allow proactive monitoring, analysis and resolution of supply chain events as they arise, communicating changes instantly throughout the supply chain. The Supply Chain Manager consists of two components, an analysis engine that allows users to explore real-time data collected from across the supply chain, and an alert manager that identifies events and business exceptions as they occur, with escalation work flows, in real-time. Alerts can be delivered on a variety of devices or applications, including browser-based clients, personal data assistants (PDAs) and wireless devices.
