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Technology Stocks : i2 Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cm who wrote (859)	11/2/1998 10:27:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2339

ERP user interfaces driving some customers nuts?! cm: Have you seen this article if so could this create an opportunity for i2,particularly considering their deal with IMIC(?).Any thoughts will be appreciated. Excerpts from Computerworld. ================ Computerworld 11/02/98) ERP user interfaces drive workers nuts Craig Stedman It used to take workers at Hydro Agri's Canadian fertilizer stores about 20 seconds to process a farmer's order. But installing SAP R/3 last January changed things — and not for the better. The average order-processing time ballooned to 90 seconds because the workers had to navigate through six R/3 screens to enter all the required data. It's a problem faced by many companies: Enterprise resource planning applications such as SAP AG's market-leading software promise many corporate benefits, but they have unwieldy user interfaces that can frustrate employees, sap their productivity and hurt customer service. "We take 45,000 orders during a six-week period, and clicking from screen to screen was a killer," said Andy Hafer, director of information management at Tampa, Fla.-based Hydro Agri North America Inc. The order-entry delays forced Hydro Agri to throw more manpower into its Canadian stores to handle the spring-planting business rush. Even information technology staffers overseeing the R/3 rollout were pressed into taking orders, Hafer said. At least 10 other buyers of ERP applications said their end users also have wrestled with the demands of R/3 and rival packages, which are much less tailored to individual business needs than the homegrown software that usually came before them........ computerworld.com