Ross Systems Announces e-Commerce Direction; Focus On Mid-Market Process Manufacturers/First Applications Delivered In September
ATLANTA, June 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Ross Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: ROSS), the leading provider of enterprise resource planning, advanced planning and customer management applications, has announced the expansion of their product strategy to encompass the delivery of customer service e-business and e- commerce products within the next six months. The initial product strategy is focused on mid-market process manufacturing organizations including food & beverage, chemical, pharmaceutical, metals and forest products.
"E-business will have more impact on changing the landscape of business than any single technology delivered in the last 20 years," said Pat Tinley, President and COO of Ross Systems, Inc. "As a major provider of a wide range of integrated application solutions, Ross Systems has defined an aggressive schedule to deliver e-commerce business to business solutions that enable our customers to integrate to their Renaissance application backbone. By September 1999, Ross will be delivering a range of e-commerce based applications that both complement and extend the capabilities of the Renaissance transaction backbone."
The initial group of Ross Systems e-commerce applications will focus on the complex customer management requirements of the processing manufacturing industry including:
* Order entry/sales quotes
* Order tracking
* Pricing, pricing simulation
* Order status
* Discount calculations/promotional discounts
* Shipping options
* Storefront
* Data queries and Internet reporting
Focus in Domain Knowledge
"Over the past six months, Ross has conducted customer research to determine how they were planning to use e-commerce in their business and what solutions would be most beneficial to their business," said Joe Southworth, Executive Vice President, e-Business Applications. "Our strategy is to focus on the domain knowledge of process manufacturing industries we have served for close to ten years. One of our main considerations in our study was to gauge the demand and timing for e-commerce solutions for these mid-market players.
"We learned some interesting things," said Southworth. "We validated our assumption that web commerce is viewed as the great equalizer for mid-market companies. It enables them to compete more effectively with larger companies -
assuming that they get to market quickly. These customers have very specific business objectives that will help them improve their competitiveness and operational efficiency."
Based on Ross' research, mid-market process manufacturers view e-business and e-commerce solutions as providing the following:
* Ways to improve internal operations.
* Ways to improve customer service while controlling costs.
* Ways to engage with trading partners to reduce on hand inventories and
reduce the 'paper jam.'
* Ways to grow new revenues.
* Ways to yield higher returns from their ERP backbone investment.
"Order management is the most common e-commerce application identified by our customers," noted Southworth. "Our customers view the Internet as prime ground for improving ways that they take, price, process and fulfill orders. Since one of the core strengths of the Renaissance ERP system is its order management capabilities, it is the logical place for us to start.
"Our customers are looking at more dynamic ways to handle complex order pricing and processing to improve customer service and increase revenue flow," said Southworth. "We will deliver solutions that help customers offer special pricing/discounts, interpret capable to promise in the manufacturing process for special orders, and provide customer service and status updates on those orders. Product characteristics and configuration will also be important in the solutions we provide for process manufacturers.
"Process manufacturers are increasingly moving away from a make-to-stock to a make-to-order environment," noted Southworth. "With this change, it is understandable why online procurement and customer service applications are critical. There are many consumer and business-to-business web sites setting the standard for how this should be done. Our role is to deliver e-commerce solutions that make a difference at the bottom line of the mid-market process manufacturing enterprise. We are currently identifying beta sites for our September delivery."
Industry Domain Expertise
The Ross Systems e-business strategy will help kindred companies in process manufacturing to build domain expertise value chains.
"Domain Value Chains are opportunities to link process manufacturing companies with common businesses, or companies that represent supply chain partners," said Southworth. "We see significant opportunities for kindred organizations to evolve their business strategies by embracing electronic commerce. With most of the customers we researched, this is a second stage in the evolution to e-business."
The company already sees Domain Value Chains forming in sectors such as the metals industry for scrap procurement, the food industry for marketing programs and the chemicals industry for formula management.
RNA Framework in Place
Underlying the Ross Systems business-to-business e-commerce strategy is the introduction of its recently announced Renaissance Network Architecture (RNA). RNA provides the framework for e-commerce and web-based processing.
RNA is a distributed, component-based architecture that supports Task Oriented Computing (TOC). TOC enables business solutions to be built that support the demands, work habits and patterns of users, especially in the world of e-business.
"In the e-business world, our architecture must be able to support hundreds and thousands of users," said Southworth. "We must be able to secure the environment effectively and manage dynamic application scalability. Connections within the system may be non-permanent and communications bandwidth issues will arise. In addition, application data may be stored on multiple, geographically dispersed machines.
"Our Renaissance Network Architecture has been engineered to support these variable conditions," noted Southworth. "RNA is Internet ready and offers a flexible transaction infrastructure to support e-commerce applications."
Ross Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions for the process manufacturing, healthcare, and public sector markets. Ross Systems solutions are differentiated by their strong fit to specific industries, their strong product functionality and integration, and the firm's ability to produce rapid results and ROI for its mid-market clients. The flagship product, Renaissance(R), comprises a broad range of applications including financials, manufacturing, supply chain management, maintenance management, transportation management, materials management, and human resources/payroll. More than 3200 companies around the world use Renaissance in open systems environments including NT and UNIX. Ross Systems employs over 650 professionals in more than 60 offices around the world to serve its customers. Ross Systems, Inc., Two Concourse Parkway, Suite 800, Atlanta, Georgia 30328, 770-351-9600, 1-877-ROSS-INC, www.rossinc.com .
Renaissance is a registered trademark and GEMBASE is a trademark of Ross Systems, Inc. Microsoft, Microsoft Windows NT, Windows, and Windows NT are either registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. Solaris is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
SOURCE Ross Systems, Inc.
CO: Ross Systems, Inc.
ST: Georgia
IN: CPR MLM
SU: PDT
06/21/99 09:30 EDT prnewswire.com |
