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ACUMEN GROUP, SX.e, and UnForm:
CLASSIC SUPPLY CHAIN ECONOMICS,
RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS,
AND THE EFFICIENCY EQUATION
As computer technology mushrooms, the number of
distinct components and features contributing to the "efficiency equation"
has grown, and companies like INFOR, and their strategic marketing
partners like ACUMEN GROUP, recognize this, and make sure that their software product
offerings are "open" enough to satisfy end-user needs for flexibility,
customization, evolution and fast response.
"Distribution Efficiency.
Delivered."
That’s the promise that ACUMEN GROUP of Rancho Dominguez, California delivers to its actual and prospective customers when it
recommends the SX.e supply chain management software solution, a
leading-edge PROGRESS-based suite of applications from INFOR, the
10th largest software company, and the 3rd largest provider
of enterprise software, ON THE PLANET.
A technology integrator with 20 years serving the distribution industry, 20
employees, over 1100 users in 11 states and 4 countries, and partner alliances across the country and in Canada, ACUMEN GROUP takes the EFFICIENCY concept promoted
in its product marketing statement seriously, and to heart, applying the concept
to its OWN business, and to the advantage of its customers.
This, in and of itself, is CLASSIC supply-chain-management economics.
SDSI's UnForm is the forms engine behind
ACUMEN GROUP's "Aculaser" document delivery solution, which was developed
four years ago and integrated with their INFOR SX.e solution for the benefit of
ACUMEN's customer base.
When ACUMEN decided to add ARCHIVING and
SCANNING functionality to the Aculaser module,
the components of the newly-released
UNFORM 7.0 Document Management Solution were a logical choice. ACUMEN
GROUP already had experience with the
leverage and efficiency gained by choosing UnForm four years ago, and now
there are more than 20 installations of Aculaser for SX.e.
Based on this experience, ACUMEN GROUP had a good idea that UnForm’s newest
components would probably be efficient to implement.
That’s one of the main ways ACUMEN GROUP
achieves higher efficiency, through the products it chooses to integrate into
the solutions it offers. Aculaser, with its UnForm engine, is a product that
ACUMEN GROUP recommends BECAUSE of its positive contribution to the EFFICIENCY
EQUATION. Both for ACUMEN GROUP and its customers.
HERE’S THE EQUATION
EFFICIENCY, in its simplest form, is
the ratio of the output to the input of any system.
In an economic sense it can be several
things:
- a term for conditions that create the
biggest possible profit with the smallest possible costs, or
- a criterion for assessing an investment,
or
- a situation that occurs when the cost
of producing a given output is as low as possible.
HERE’S HOW IT WORKS
As computer technology mushrooms, the number of
distinct components and features contributing to the "efficiency
equation" has grown, and companies like INFOR, and their strategic marketing
partners like ACUMEN GROUP, recognize this, and make sure that their software product
offerings are "open" enough to satisfy end-user needs for flexibility,
customization, evolution and fast response.
"My observation is that the look and feel of
forms and reports can be very unique between clients, and can evolve and change
over time, sometimes rapidly", according to Doug Wannamaker, the leader of ACUMEN
GROUP’s systems integration team and a key management employee. "As can the
delivery methods, again, as technology mushrooms", he adds.
"The inherent speed,
efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of forms design changes using UnForm
is one of the primary reasons that we chose UnForm for our Aculaser module. We ARE the
I.T. staff for a large number of our customers, and they come
to us for forms changes and enhancements. And so the EFFICIENCY of that process
is very important, because it affects our own internal business processes, as
well as those of our customers."
An EFFICIENT Archiving Development Experience
Doug initially reported to other members of the
management team that the preliminary proof-of-concept prototype to integrate
archiving and scanning features into the Aculaser and SX.e mainstream system would take
about one week. Doug
got the go-ahead and attended SDSI’s June technical conference, primarily to
scope out the new UnForm archiving and scanning components, which had recently been released into
BETA.
"I came back from a great conference with what I needed, went to work on
it, and instead of a week, I was done in only TWO DAYS".
The net contribution from that one "input-factor" to the EFFICIENCY equation,
that of supplying a major new set of capabilities
to Aculaser and SX.e for the benefit of the client and prospect-base with a
minimum amount of development investment, is significant. And according to the principles
of supply-chain economics, that’s a cost savings that will travel down the
chain, benefiting the downstream partners.
FAVORITE FEATURES
Doug continues: "UnForm Archiving’s
browser-based retrieval system is my favorite part of the package. And when
it came to integrating document retrieval directly into our applications,
I thought it would be the trickiest part, but when I put my theory to the test,
IT JUST WORKED."
"Another aspect of the browser interface that I
really like, and one I think our customers are going to appreciate, is how
document browser pages containing different document types for a vendor or
customer can be
displayed TOGETHER by setting up the custom category properties to index documents
according to shared field values, like customer name or order number, for
example."
"That’s an idea we got right from the demo archive that’s included with
the software."
"The archiving samples that came included with
the software gave us a very logical roadmap for an archiving scheme using the
data captured from form text during an UnForm job. That definitely contributed
to the rapid development."
Because of its potential for cutting down on
the number and length of an enterprise's customer service phone calls, which is
another efficiency contributor, Doug says the Entity ID document property
has earned a high rank on his favorite-features list. "It is very useful if
you want customers or vendors to be able to log onto the site and ONLY look at
what you want them to look at."
"Add the scanning tool to the list. It makes
archiving "external" documents EASY."
"To be honest, I feel we have only touched
the surface of what we can do with UnForm's archiving system, and yet we
already have a finished, integrated product ready to be offered to our clients
and prospects!"
It sounds like what Doug is saying is that his
clients' efficiency is going to improve when they have it installed, and over
the course of time he's confident that he's going to find new and innovative
ways to use UnForm's Document Management Solution to CONTINUE adding efficiency
input factors to the equation.
And that's "Distribution Efficiency. Delivered."
Using INFOR SX.e, Progress, UnForm 7.0, and
ACUMEN GROUP's integration expertise.
Thank you to Doug and the management at ACUMEN
GROUP for sharing their experience and perspective with us.
ACUMEN GROUP'S management team:
Row 1: Craig Killam, President; Doug Wannamaker,
Systems Integration; Tom Sawyer, Technology Services; Armando Lopasso,
Application Development
Row 2: Antoinette Habets, VP Sales & Marketing; Cordy Rost, General Manager;
Mike Odell, Business Consulting; Jack Moore, Client Development
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