JBA, the leading global supplier of integrated business and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems for mid-sized companies in the apparel and footwear, food, beverage, automotive and electronics industries, announced today the availability of @ctive Enterprise Series, its new suite of software designed to aggressively extend the supply chain by allowing customers to manipulate and automate how business processes are carried out.
JBA is first to the mid-range market with graphical process design tools that effectively link work management elements, from high-level business process modelling to the most precise details of user messages. It has delivered a powerful suite of products that effectively converts passive business control systems into pro-active business improvement systems.
"Customers should be able to optimise their processes and differentiate their business, without re-programming," comments Bruckner de Villiers, Managing Director of JBA South Africa. "Inert and passive systems are inadequate for customers today, faced with rapidly evolving business challenges. Systems have to be able to not only identify problems; but need to identify them earlier, respond more quickly and with more fluidity, as well as at half the cost. They need to be pro-active in a way the market hasn`t seen before. @ctive Enterprise delivers on that vision," continued de Villiers.
Setting the series of products apart are @ctive Modeler, a groundbreaking process definition tool, and the Work Management Engine. The strength of @ctive Modeler lies in its flexibility and capability to define how business processes are executed. The Work Management Engine is deeply imbedded in System 21`s software, and is designed to uniquely manage and drive defined processes, thus enabling the elimination or automation of manual tasks. Users are able to manipulate a model by cutting and pasting, or dragging and dropping activity icons without having to re-program. Through their use, companies are able to design their organisations and processes at every point where an opportunity manifests itself, allowing companies to exploit changes in their marketplace.
AMR Research, in a pre-view of the product at JBA`s Encounter `99, reports in its March 30, 1999 Alert on Enterprise Applications, "JBA has quietly assembled a powerful capability, and delivered a tool that automates how business processes are executed. The @ctive Modeler is one of the first business process modelling tools to deliver on some of the original promise of this product category. @ctive Modeler is easy to use, and gives business users the power to take control of how processes are executed and determine how they can be continuously used."
"We are pleased with the positive responses we`ve been receiving from AMR and other industry analysts," says de Villiers. "We`ve known all along the power and depth that the @ctive Enterprise Series has to offer. Having the analyst community recognise the benefits of the unique tools within the Series, and that no other vendor is able to deliver on these, is especially rewarding."
To enable customers to rapidly take advantage of these benefits, JBA is also announcing the family of @ctive Process Products - a set of pre- defined business process templates. These have been developed in conjunction with customers and reference the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) best practice models. "By implementing these templates, a business is able to rapidly implement System 21 and adopt best practice methods," continued de Villiers. "By using @ctive Modeler, they can continually refine, adjust and customise their processes and best practices to meet customer and market requirements. The @ctive Process Products present a supremely flexible, customised system to the mid-market, who typically found these type of tools cost prohibitive. This is a first for the mid-range market," added de Villiers.
"Some of the @ctive Enterprise technologies JBA is delivering, are probably the most exciting things I`ve seen in business solutions," says Matt Stevens of Midland Plastics in the UK. "They will allow us to cut our overheads to the bone and to continually re-engineer our business processes in order to match the business model that we are using. Our business is so customer driven that we can`t tell what our business will look like in five years time, or the business model we`ll be using to run it."
The products are available now, and aimed specifically at the mid-range market in price and in resource requirements., The @ctive Enterprise Series is already giving JBA customers both tactical and strategic advantages over their competitors, such as:
Manual tasks are executed and run automatically, allowing a business to significantly speed up its ability to process transactions and deliver better service.
Separate processes can be built and managed to meet the needs and issues of each customer. Customers can focus their efforts on adding value - @ctive Modeler provides a simple, cost effective way to achieve massive benefits through analysis and re-engineering of business processes without the cost/time/resources needed for consultancy.
As business processes improve, the system can be changed to support them, in a fraction of the time, and at a fraction of the cost that has in the past been required.
The series includes the following modules, which will be supported by a new range of @ctive services that JBA and it partners will provide on a global basis:
@ctive Modeler: market-leading graphical business process design tool for build and optimisation of processes.
@ctive Process Products: a new family of predefined business process templates built using the @ctive Modeler to solve predefined issues.
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JBA
JBA South Africa (Pty) Limited, is the South African subsidiary of JBA International Plc, which in turn owned by London Stock Exchange listed JBA Holdings, a leading world-wide provider of enterprise management software solutions, with local offices in Johannesburg, and Cape Town, and with a strong presence throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
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