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Lawson Wins Major Contract With the Mcgraw-hill Companies
Business Wire - March 30, 1998 07:20
%LAWSON-SOFTWARE %MINNESOTA %COMED %COMPUTERS %ELECTRONICS V%BW P%BW
MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 30, 1997--
Influential Publishing Industry Win Advances Lawson Vertical
Market Initiative
Lawson Software, The Web Enterprise Company(TM), today announced that it has won a several million dollar software contract with The McGraw-Hill Companies, one of the world's largest providers of financial information and rating services, and publishers of educational, business and professional information.
The McGraw-Hill Companies selected the LAWSON INSIGHT(TM) Human Resources and Financial Process Suites and Lawson's industry-leading Employee and Manger Web Service Centers to extend Internet/intranet self-service access to 15,000 employees at more than 430 locations worldwide. Influenced by Lawson's market-leading technology, low cost of ownership and core business functionality, The McGraw-Hill Companies selected Lawson after many months of comparing the competitor's solutions.
"Access to information, analysis and knowledge has been the focus of The McGraw-Hill Companies for more than a century," said John Kerin, senior vice president of information management and CIO for The McGraw-Hill Companies. "We are pleased with Lawson's business vision and ability to support The McGraw-Hill Companies' global needs and Internet capabilities."
The LAWSON INSIGHT Employee and Manager Web Service Centers provide employees and managers the ability to use state-of-the-art web technology for specific human resource tasks--at a great savings in people and cost resources. The Employee Web Service Center, accessible through any standard HTML browser, provides real-time access for employees to perform a wide range of recurring, common updating and access tasks to information such as address, emergency contacts, direct deposit and benefit plans. Some companies estimate that expanding Web access to employees improves productivity of human resource departments by as much as 50 percent.
Kerin said "Lawson's vision of 'zero training,' along with its forward-thinking business philosophy integrating IT tightly with business objectives, is directly in line with our corporate culture."
The Self-Evident Applications(TM) (SEA) model is based on a network-centric architecture designed that delivers application functionality to light-client, browser-based desktops. Among the significant customer benefits of the new technology is the elimination of expensive and time-consuming application software training requirements and the mass deployment of graphical enterprise applications systems via corporate intranets and extranets.
One of the key factors affecting enterprise implementations is the elaborate training required of each user at multiple sites throughout the corporation. With SEA, Lawson users will never again need to be trained on their Lawson applications, so implementation becomes simply a matter of delivering the application over the Internet to users who can then start working day one with any standard web browser.
"We are moving forward aggressively with our vertical market initiatives in publishing," said Dan Metzger, executive vice president of marketing, Lawson Software. "Many large and influential publishing houses, like The McGraw-Hill Companies, CMP Media, The Gannett Corporation and a dozen or so others, are finding that Lawson INSIGHT creates tremendous business efficiencies, implements easily and provides superior information access capabilities."
The McGraw-Hill Companies will implement Lawson's Financial and Human Resources Process Suites globally using a shared services platform that will be centrally located at its corporate office in Hightstown, N.J. The McGraw-Hill Companies will manage its entire operational structure by using Lawson INSIGHT to collect data from multiple companies within its domestic and international organizations. The shared services concept will minimize The McGraw-Hill Companies' costs, allow the organization to use best practices specific to their organization and facilitate benchmarking of publishing industry business processes to improve overall efficiencies.
The McGraw-Hill Companies purchased the LAWSON INSIGHT Financials Suite, Human Resources Suite, Procurement Suite, Lawson's Web Self Service Centers, plus LOGAN(TM), a browser-based tool that provides information access, Drill Around(TM) , query and graphical reporting capabilities fed from the dynamic metadata in on-line transaction processing (OLTP) systems. The solution will run on HP9000 hardware and an Oracle database.
Founded in 1888, The McGraw-Hill Companies is a leading information services provider, meeting worldwide needs in education, business, finance, the professions and government. Sales in 1997 were $3.5 billion.
Lawson Software, The Web Enterprise Company(TM), is a $166 million provider of self-evident, role-based web solutions for managing financials, human resources, procurement and supply chain management. With more than 2,500 mid- to large-sized corporate customers, and sales of its healthcare and retail market solutions growing at 174 percent and 119 percent respectively, Lawson has distinguished itself competitively through a unique blend of feature-rich customer solutions, technology innovation and user-friendly support. The LAWSON INSIGHT(TM) line has been acclaimed by technology analysts for its innovative and unique use of leading-edge technologies, like Self-Evident Applications(TM) (SEA) on the Web, and Drill Around(TM) for integrated, cross-application data access.
IDC states Lawson is "the first among leading enterprise application vendors to deliver Web-based applications to market." The Information Technology Association of America asserts Lawson is the first to be certified for Year 2000 compliance. Says the Meta Group, "Lawson gives its customers quantified savings by aiming their technology at saving corporations on overhead...a rare thing in the client/server world." Offering LAWSON INSIGHT for UNIX platforms and Enterprise/400 for the AS/400, Lawson has 18 offices in 17 countries, more than 20 distributors worldwide and a 96 percent client retention over five years. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis and London. Additional information about Lawson Software is available on the company's Web site, lawson.com, or by calling (800) 477-1357.
Lawson and LAWSON INSIGHT are registered trademarks of Lawson Software. Other company and product names are the trademarks of their respective companies.
CONTACT: Lawson Software, Minneapolis
Judith Rothrock, 203/459-4774,
judith.rothrock@lawson.com
or
Nancy Harrower, 612/362-4766,
nancy.harrower@lawson.com
or
ARM Communications
Alison Minaglia, 203/328-9695,
aminaglia@compuserve.com
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