A laboratory supply company that effectively uses Sun MicrosystemsStarOffice is pulling clients and suppliers into embracing the software to gain the benefits of flexibility and reliability.
"Sun's StarOffice, a powerful, full-featured, multi-platform office productivity suite, has improved staff productivity at Elabtec considerably," says Riaan Rossouw, from Elabtec, a 'one stop' medical, chemical, research and quality laboratory supplier which operates in the Eastern Cape, from Mossel Bay to Umtata.
"Our sales reps would rather be on the road than typing up reports and proposals in the office, so StarOffice suits them well," he says.
"With StarOffice, our reps can cut and paste material from our supplier's Web sites, helping Elabtec to draw up relevant proposals and quotes that much faster," says Roussouw.
"Due to our continued success with StarOffice, which we consider one of the best office packages on the market because of its flexibility, reliability and cost-effectiveness, we are interesting our suppliers and clients in the software," he says.
Elabtec's suppliers include Corning, Duracell, Epson, Nikon and a range of others - enabling Elabtec to supply the prime brands for almost all laboratory needs.
Elabtec has a large client base, from Parmalat South Africa to Venture (a supplier to Daimler-Chrysler), AECI Coatings (Dulux) and all the Universities and Technikons in the area.
"Apart from word processing, spreadsheet, html, and graphic capabilities, StarOffice can talk to the databases of other companies," says Rossouw.
StarOffice software is available worldwide for commonly used operating systems, offering a productivity solution to enterprises running heterogeneous computing infrastructures. Not only does this full suite of productivity software enable users to read and write legacy files, but runs on Microsoft Windows, Solaris, Linus and OS2.
To date more than 3.3 million copies of StarOffice have been downloaded and distributed worldwide. Locally Sun Microsystems SA has distributed 5 000 copies of StarOffice 5.2 since May of this year.
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