IBM Articulates Leadership in Supply Chain Integration

Business Wire, March 13, 2000

Business/High-Tech Editors

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 13, 2000

National Manufacturing Week--In a keynote speech today Bill Reedy, IBM's Vice President of Marketing for Business Integration, outlined integration challenges and opportunities facing the manufacturing industry.

Businesses now need to move from stand-alone applications and static Web sites to fully integrated IT environments that include employees, customers, suppliers and business partners. To win in this market, companies must:

-- Strengthen links to vendors and suppliers -- for example, a retail store
that builds new channels through Web sites or in-store kiosks, linking them to
existing inventory, fulfillment and order processing systems.

-- Maximize ERP implementation -- ERP implementation can be difficult, on
average, for every dollar spent on an ERP system, nine are spent on
integration.

-- Automate business processes to find new ways of doing business or to improve
services and control costs -- for example, in a hospital emergency room where
seconds count, a workflow process can save time handling information, which
could mean the difference between life and death.

-- Improve the speed and efficiency of transaction processing -- particularly
relevant for trading systems, where the relationship between trader and broker
depends on confidence in speed and 100 percent reliability.

This growing list of technology issues is what IBM's software is addressing today. Based on IBM's MQSeries* family of integration software products -- MQSeries, MQSeries Integrator and MQSeries Workflow -- IBM provides customers in the manufacturing industry with the tools to integrate new Web-based technologies and existing IT systems to take full advantage of business data and processes within the enterprise and beyond.

IBM also works with a number of business partners to deliver supply chain integration and business-to-business commerce solutions, including Ariba, CommerceQuest, Extricity and i2.

For more information, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/ts/mqseries/.> * Indicates trademark or registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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