J.D. Edwards Finds Its Inner-Self Within Its 5th Incarnation Part 3: Market Impact

This is yet another example of what difference a year can make, and of a vendor taking advantage of a given second chance. A year ago, J.D. Edwards was in a rather self-loathing mood amid sagging sales, massive layoffs and restructuring, and with rumors of a possible buyout abounding as well, all making existing customers quite concerned and potential ones extremely leery (see J.D. Edwards' QUEST To End Its String Of Pyrrhic Victories). Worse than that, there was a lingering general feeling that the company had long been unable to articulate a product strategy that was well-attuned with the market needs/trends. The appointment of the new Chairman and CEO Bob Dutkowsky, from the hindsight, after less than a year at the helm (J.D. Edwards' CEO Retires Again; This Time For Good?), appears to be just what the doctor had ordered, resembling to a degree a feat of the current PeopleSoft's CEO, Craig Conway. Bringing an outsider (even if he/she comes with a pedigree of the closest partner, IBM) at a helm of a company which had forever jealously guarded that position only for its dynasty ranks will have helped bring a new prospective on how to further satisfy the customers, and will have allayed sluggishness and a invented here' mentality that typically comes along with ruling too familiar a territory for far too long.

Let's face it, J.D. Edwards is not stampeding like a raging bull amid the bad economy, but the new management team has at least attained many positive changes (including instilling a winning attitude) by leveraging a proven product and its congenial, albeit often ineffective and anemic organization in last few years, and by fathoming how to deliver pragmatic value to a born-again-loyal installed base and to the prospective fertile "midrange to mid-cap" target market, which consists of enterprises that are loath to any radical changes to their business practices, but are rather inclined to improving their businesses incrementally by adding additional functions around their core ERP investment.
First of all, Dutkowsky's natural initial focus on the company's improved financial performance, sales execution and continuation of products portfolio integration will have addressed the following two important issues: 1) the common perception of the troubled company, and 2) the difficulty of regaining confidence. To that end, important operational areas, like pipeline management, cash flow increase, collections/days of sales outstanding (DSO) reduction, margin improvements, etc., have all been improving, while increasing sales to the installed base, expanding the services business, and enhancing the company's market visibility has been happening as well.

While the new CEO has indisputably produced quick results and has boosted the company's posture (albeit he still has remaining work cut out for him), it would be unfair not to give credit to the former CEO for paving the way at least in part. McVaney not only co-founded J.D. Edwards, but he also navigated it through an Odyssey-like transition from solely the IBM AS/400 (now iSeries) platform to UNIX and Windows NT while keeping most customers committed and arguably content. This is in contrast to the experience of many contemporary AS/400-only ERP competitors, with some like SSA and JBA being fatally wounded in the process. McVaney, often disparaged by his counterparts and Wall Street pundits for his unsophisticated but effective managerial style, never managed to create a real software powerhouse though, other than a legacy of honest rather than glitzy competitiveness.

That is exactly what the new management team has finally managed to crack the company seems to have found its soul, as it has finally pinpointed the right offering for its target market (both geography, customer size, and vertical segments wise), and it also seems to be exuding an air of confidence without arrogance, which had rarely, if ever, been seen in the past. Listening to customers, deploying new emerging technologies, delivering more software in the next two years than it has ever happened in any two-year period since the company's inception, putting the latest version of its products portfolio under the unified umbrella brand (that is also marrying the company's name to the product for the first time, further enhancing the brand recognition), delivering industry-based functionality, renewed commitment to professional services, technology innovations via partnerships, a new modular product delivery approach to make the purchasing and upgrading of its portfolio of applications easier and more efficient for the customer to rationalize and digest — should all be the harmony of the music for the customers' ears.

In a nutshell, J.D. Edwards seems poised to deliver applications within its traditional verticals that are wide-ranging, integrated, and modular (loosely decoupled) at the same time, which is apparently a clearer message and a better business model for the company.
Still, McVaney should feel additionally vindicated by the fact that with him at the helm J.D. Edwards had started to put its house in order. The fact remains that the company had achieved a fair balance between the product functionality scope expansion and the product architecture flexibility still during his tenure (see J.D. Edwards On The Mend; This Time Might Be For Real). One is to expect that Mr. Dutkowsky will continue to emphasize the recently breadwinning products like OneWorld (recently renamed ERP 8) and supply chain planning & execution suite (coming mostly from former Numetrix) and a prospective breadwinner, CRM product from YOUcentric (see J.D. Edwards Fires Siebel, Hires YOU). The focus on industry solutions such as for high-tech/electronics, industrial fabrication & assembly (IFA), automotive, life sciences, and architectural & construction, should continue as well. The J.D. Edward 5 product family featuring solutions for CRM, SCM, supplier management, business intelligence (BI), and Web-based collaboration, as well as an architecture that is evolving to embrace Web services were likely hatched under McVaney's wing as well.

Using a deliberate approach of not jumping injudiciously on every latest technology bandwagon, the company has by and large successfully taken its customers from mainframe-based systems to the Web, without resorting to a rip-and-replace' strategy (in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary manner), while also delivering an increasingly broad set of solutions.

The following final touches of the new management are apparently what made the long awaited quantum leap possible:

* A new product development philosophy for J.D. Edwards 5, allowing the product to be enhanced incrementally without necessarily requiring customers to update all modules and products at once, and including a stringent software Quality Assessment (QA) process that brings requirements analysis and QA planning much sooner in the development cycle. J.D. Edwards 5 covers the entire suite of products that the company has developed or acquired so far, and going forward, each product grouping will be independently enhanced to meet the demands of customers, while also breaking the applications down into smaller modules should allow customers to purchase what they need when they need them, which is in tune with the current buying market. Despite a depressed economy, enterprises still need to upgrade and enhance those applications required to support collaborative processes for internal users and external trading partners, yet they must be able to prove a speedy return on the investment (ROI). This has proven to be crucial in selling additional functionality into the installed base, but it also gives J.D. Edwards' sales reps "multiple entry points" into new accounts.

* Combined with the above comes the unified brand name and totally refurbished marketing, including a common look and feel to previously disparate literature for an unwieldy myriad of different product names, and more effective communications to the market and press/analysts, all that have greatly lacked in the past.

* Focus on its traditional vertical markets while foraying into new markets that build on the company's known strengths in financials/manufacturing/distribution, such as Real Estate and Construction/Development, and staying away from markets that are the strongholds of some fierce competitors (e.g., SAP, PeopleSoft, or Lawson) and would only dilute efforts, like Federal Government, Healthcare, and Retail.

* A number of fast-tracked integrated releases of J.D. Edwards' CRM product in less than a year, initially focused on Sales Force Automation (SFA) and support for the IBM iSeries platform, which is used by a larger part of its installed base.

Although J.D Edwards remains at the No. 4 in the global enterprise applications vendors' league (with a support for 21 languages, and several dozens localized country issues), and PeopleSoft is now at a safe distance at the No. 3, behind SAP and Oracle, J.D. Edwards' recent performance is more impressive than those of its bigger counterparts, given the company's traditional focus on midrange manufacturing and distribution enterprises, a market segment with a great potential, but the one whose buying power has been severely affected by the current economy. The crucial driver of its license revenue revival has been the client base's adoption of its strong native extended-ERP functionality such as supply chain planning, collaboration and execution.

Moreover, with its product openness and flexibility, J.D. Edwards has broadened its hunting grounds and it has lately been successfully competing against SAP and Oracle at some segments of the higher-end of the manufacturing market. It has also enhanced its products for the service industries where it can now compete against PeopleSoft, SAP, Oracle, Geac, Lawson and Infinium. Owing to its own CRM product, it has even won against former ally Siebel Systems in the Financial Services market.

Therefore, J.D. Edwards' functional scope is now undeniably large, as it offers almost about everything from traditional ERP to full web-based collaborative modules for CRM, SCM and optimization at both strategic and tactical level. The company's applications are 100% web-enabled using Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and HTML, and all applications also work on Windows CE at the lowest user interface (UI) level. Meanwhile, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is native to the product, and mobile technologies are fully supported, particularly in applications like its CRM, rendering it a technology agnostic suite supporting all of the leading industry-accepted platforms.

Particularly encouraging, indeed, is the fact that the company has recently been creating buzz much more about the product functionality scope expansion than the product technology superiority'. In its attempt to shed the image of mere a traditional ERP vendor a few years ago, J.D. Edwards had initially focused on e-collaboration and extended-ERP applications, albeit with much of the functionality coming from numerous third parties. The company had instead tried to differentiate itself from competitors by embedding EAI into its OneWorld Xe product through its XPI integration layer — an XML-based interoperability engine and architecture that handles data, process, and workflow integration between enterprises.

Although J.D. Edwards' move into the EAI and the product openness arenas has been lately vindicated by other monolithic giants' endorsements of product openness (see SAP Opens The 'Miss Congeniality' Contest , Siebel Rallies Its Integration Alliance Troops and Oracle Makes A U-Turn At The "All Things To All People" Exit), and although the XPIs/XBPs seem to have proven their concept, the company has until very recently struggled without widening the breadth of its natively provided applications. Now, with J.D. Edwards 5 and its ample natively provided functionality, the "Idea to Action" and "Freedom to Choose" mantras could sound as a plausible humility of a vendor that offers flexibility to its customers, rather than an action out of desperation due to the lack of its own offering. These ideas have meanwhile been rendered valid by the emerging awareness of Web Services' promise for which J.D. Edwards has built good foundations with its loosely-coupled infrastructure and service-based product architecture blueprint.

Having further fine-tuned its ears to the mid-market wishes, J.D. Edwards has seemingly been staying away from being an infrastructure developer, somewhat contrasting its bigger counterparts' ambitions, as it remains a pure enterprise applications developer open to partnerships to deliver applications, services, and products that are outside its core competencies.

A prime example would be the renewed and enhanced partnerships with IBM and webMethods. Having long realized that its plethora of disparate applications have to co-exist both within and outside the J.D. Edwards' umbrella, the two companies struck a partnership a few years ago, and as a result, webMethods has supplied the embedded XPI platform for integrating J. D. Edwards' applications as well as third-party applications in a manner of an integration hub for both data and processes. Going forward, however, webMethods will seemingly become the preferred integration provider instead of J.D. Edwards abridging applications using webMethods' tools and further dissipating its resources, as it has been the case so far.

J.D. Edwards Finds Its Inner-Self Within Its 5th Incarnation Part 2: FOCUS Announcements Continued

However, contrary to the concrete delivery announcements discussed in Part One, during FOCUS, J.D. Edwards announced merely its vision for a Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) suite with full capabilities to electronically collaborate with suppliers and partners across the supply chain. Having advanced the concept of SRM beyond other offerings currently on the market, J.D. Edwards believes to be in a great position to fill future customers' growing need for more visibility, real-time response and collaboration in the supply chain. To that end, the company is leveraging its ERP, Advanced Planning, and supplier applications like Supplier Self-Service, as well as existing product partnerships with companies such as Ariba, MatrixOne, and Agile, to deliver an SRM solution today as a part of J.D Edwards 5.

Going forward, however, J.D. Edwards will make additional SRM enhancements to support the management of the five key functions of the Supplier Lifecycle design, plan, source, fulfill and settle, through real time proactive messaging and alerts presented via Web-based portals. As current supply chain offerings in the market still leave gaps in with suppliers, this future broad, integrated and configurable suite will supposedly optimize supplier relationships over the course of procuring direct goods, indirect goods, services and people items a process J.D. Edwards refers to as Supplier Lifecycle Management (SLM). The next J.D. Edwards SRM product to be released, Buyer Workstation, is slated for next year, and it should combine the Strategic Planning and Fulfillment functions, laying the groundwork to develop the complete five-function SRM suite.
While the above significant new product deliveries have happened under its own steam, the company has not departed from its traditional policy of congenial partnering with other prominent software providers either. To that end, on July 15, J.D. Edwards announced the release of its latest version of Demand Planning, a significantly enhanced application designed to meet the needs of companies with challenging forecasting environments, by leveraging technology from Demantra, a Cambridge, MA-based provider of demand-driven supply chain software.

As mentioned in Part One, a part of the company's enhanced suite of Advanced Planning applications in J.D. Edwards 5, Demand Planning works in tandem with Demand Consensus to create a true collaborative forecasting environment across the supply chain. Using historical demand information and market intelligence, Demand Planning employs statistical and multi-dimensional data modeling capabilities to predict and plan for future product demand. Unlike many competing offerings, which typically utilize only a single, "best-fit" statistical model to forecast future demand, J.D. Edwards cites its Demand Planning combines statistics derived from multiple models to create a more accurate forecast for better managing seasonality, intermittent demand, unusual events, and changes in demand trends and patterns.

In addition, Demand Planning can analyze and forecast the impact of events such as holidays, promotions, and price sensitivities and product dependencies. As with all Advanced Planning applications, Demand Planning comes pre-integrated with the J.D. Edwards 5 ERP and supply chain execution (SCE) offerings for instantaneous response to supply chain events. Enhancements to Demand Planning reportedly include faster computation speed, a more user-friendly interface, improvements to statistical modeling capabilities to accommodate intermittent and erratic demand, and allocation management functions to improve spare parts and co-product demand management.

Further during FOCUS, J.D. Edwards announced that it will join forces with Aprimo, Inc. to bring together its ERP and CRM applications with the Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) solutions from Aprimo. Aprimo Marketing includes a suite of products for marketing operations including Strategic Planner, Marcom Manager, Financial Manager, and Event Manager, and a suite of products for customer communications including Direct Marketer, Lead Manager, and Web Response Manager.

J.D. Edwards' customers should now have the capability to integrate the J.D. Edwards Financials solution with the Aprimo Marketing Financial Manager as well as integrate the J.D. Edwards CRM solution with the Aprimo Marketing Lead Manager offering. These applications should allow J.D. Edwards to expand its CRM capabilities beyond the standard campaign management functionality. In addition to integrating to the J.D. Edwards CRM solution, Aprimo Marketing's Financial Manager module will integrate to the J.D. Edwards ERP offering. Marketing budgets, invoices, committed funds, and forecast expenses can be shared between both solutions to ensure accurate and timely financial management of the marketing budget, one of the largest discretionary spends in the organization. Under terms of this referral partnership agreement, both companies will market and promote the respective integrated products separately.

On the technology front, during FOCUS, J.D. Edwards and webMethods, Inc. (NASDAQ: WEBM), one of the leading providers of enterprise applications integration (EAI) software, announced the expansion of their eexisting, quintessential strategic business partnership to further address customers' integration needs. The companies are building upon their exclusive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement by adding a co-sell and resell component, providing a "single face" to the customer.
In addition, webMethods and J.D. Edwards will co-develop future versions of the J.D. Edwards adapter, which will be available exclusively through the partnership, and aimed at optimizing integration with enterprise applications. J.D. Edwards harnessed the use of integration software within its product line years ago (see J.D. Edwards Chooses Freedom to Choose EAI), and it continually strives to improve the ease of use for its customers. To that end, J.D. Edwards will work with webMethods to develop, market and sell solutions that help customers transform their technology infrastructure into a functional whole.

The expansion of the relationship reportedly stems from the numerous joint successes the companies have had deploying their software for customers throughout the world. Through OEM and collaborative marketing agreements, webMethods and J.D. Edwards will supposedly provide customers with a strong integration software, seamless customer support and access to broad value-added functionality, including J.D. Edwards XBPs. As mentioned above, built by J.D. Edwards on the webMethods integration platform, XBPs are pre-defined business processes that tie diverse applications and enterprises together in real time.

As a result, on September 24, J.D. Edwards announced the release of the latest version of its XPI middleware software, aimed at enabling companies to collaborate with multiple suppliers, customers and other valued business partners by linking their disparate systems and applications. Among the enhancements for the latest version of XPI are a dozen new XBPs and full native support for Web Services. First introduced in June of 2001, XBPs have been devised to go beyond simply connecting applications to activating responses appropriate for an enterprise's workflows. They operate in conjunction with integrated ERP, SCM and CRM systems and initiate action, extracting and delivering data inside and outside the organization to drive order promising, sales order processing, purchasing, billing, invoicing, shipping and other business-critical functions. New XBPs available with the latest release of XPI include:

* Address Book synchronization

* General Ledger (GL) updates

* Order Promising

* Order Notification

* Manufacturing Work Orders

* Inventory Item Balance

* Procurement order notification

These new XBPs were developed and pre-defined by leveraging J.D. Edwards' existing applications as well as the company's depth of experience in specific industry sectors. Moreover, all 85 XBPs offered by J.D. Edwards can be deployed as fully standards-compliant Web Services today, since conceptually, XBP technology and Web Services supposedly share a very similar approach to integration, and are highly compatible. Consequently, while the latest version of XPI allows all XBPs to be surfaced and deployed as Web Services today, conversely, through the existing support in XPI for Web Services, J.D. Edwards' applications also are enabled to receive third-party Web Services.
Nurturing further likely its most important partnership, during FOCUS, J.D. Edwards and IBM Corporation (NYSE: IBM) announced a slew of new pre-configured server offerings and industry-specific bundled solutions for customers looking to reduce the risk, complexity and cost of running a collaborative e-business. With this announcement, J.D. Edwards reportedly becomes the first IBM Business Partner to co-market specialized IBM eServer systems for each of its currently supported platforms. The new IBM eServers for J.D. Edwards come packaged with:

* IBM WebSphere 3.5, a stalwart e-business application deployment environment with a broad set of application services, including capabilities for transaction management, security, clustering, performance, availability, connectivity and scalability, which offers possibly the most comprehensive e-business platform to extend, automate, integrate, personalize, build, deploy and grow a company's e-business solution.

* IBM DB2 database, preferred by J.D. Edwards for its enterprise software on UNIX, and one of J.D. Edwards' two preferred Windows OS-environment databases for J.D. Edwards OneWorld Xe enterprise software.

* IBM TotalStorage, a complete selection of cross-platform storage offerings that cover storage networking, disk, tape, software and services.

IBM and J.D. Edwards have further unveiled many other packaged systems aimed at lowering the TCO of servers and software priced for the mid-market. The result of 25 years of partnering, the systems include CRM on the iSeries (formerly AS/400), CRM on Linux (starting with the solution for Financial Institutions), and xSeries for J.D. Edwards 5. With the price points offered and the range of alternatives available for J.D. Edwards' customers, IBM has positioned itself to be a prominent provider for hardware and software in the mid-market (given the lion share of J.D. Edwards' customers running on its equipment).

The new IBM eServer pSeries and xSeries servers for J.D. Edwards join the first IBM eServer for J.D. Edwards, an iSeries offering introduced last fall. First few of J.D. Edwards Industry Bundles (a group of modules that encompasses core functionality utilized by a certain industry) to be delivered under the above IBM alliance will be: Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), Wholesale/Distribution, Industrial Fabrication & Assembly (IFA), and Real Estate.

The partnership was finally crowned on September 19, with J.D. Edwards' announcement that it would standardize its J.D. Edwards 5 on IBM's infrastructure technology or "middleware." J.D. Edwards' believes this decision will provide customers with a lower total cost of ownership (TCO), and that it sets the benchmark for ease of use, rapid implementation, easier integration, and portal-based accessibility--all of which are key requirements for customers in the mid-market to mid-cap market.

J.D. Edwards 5 applications will be pre-integrated with IBM's WebSphere Application Server and Portal with embedded security, Lotus collaboration tools, and DB2 Universal Database (DB2 UDB). The joint package will run on all vendor technologies that J.D. Edwards currently supports including Microsoft Windows and UNIX environments from IBM, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Sun Microsystems, and Unisys, and the IBM eServer iSeries. J.D. Edwards will continue to offer customers integration and interoperability via its XPI� (eXtended Process Integration) solution using webMethods technologies.

J.D. Edwards Finds Its Inner-Self Within Its 5th Incarnation

The following recent announcements by, J.D. Edwards & Company (NASDAQ: JDEC), a leading provider of collaborative enterprise software and accompanying consulting, education and support services to mid-sized and larger enterprises, should indicate that a reborn company with a new air of confidence has for some time been putting its house in order, expanding its offerings, conveying a more attuned message, executing a more aggressive sales strategy, and improving its cash situation at a critical time.

On August 21, the company reported upbeat financial results for the third quarter ended July 31, 2002. Total revenue for Q3 2002 was $229 million, a 9% growth compared to $209 million in Q3 2001 (See Figure 1). The license revenue grew 10% to $55 million in Q3 2002, compared to $50.0 in Q3 2001, whereas services revenue was $174 million, up 9% from $159 million a year ago. Actual net income, including acquisition-related and other charges, was $9 million the third quarter of fiscal 2002, compared to a hefty net loss of $186 million, in the third quarter of fiscal 2001.

In addition to a healthy number of new license agreements, the quarter was overwhelmingly marked by a new generation of landmark new products and functionality releases. Possibly the most prominent of these was the May 21 announcement of the general availability of J.D. Edwards 5, touted as a new, comprehensive family of collaborative enterprise software products and services for customers and business partners. J.D. Edwards 5 represents the vendor's fifth generation of solutions throughout 25 years of its existence, as it reportedly draws on the best of these architectures and brings the company's comprehensive set of products under one umbrella. J.D. Edwards 5 should also provide a path into the future for customers using the company's older solutions - OneWorld and WorldSoftware. It features modular, integrated, Web-enabled applications that should assist large- and medium-sized businesses in improving their business performance.

J.D. Edwards 5 includes the following seven product lines:

1. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP);

2. Supply Chain Management (SCM);

3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM);

4. Supplier Relationship Management (SRM);

5. Business Intelligence (BI);

6. Collaboration and Integration; and

7. Tools and Technology.

Although not currently fully Web services enabled, J.D. Edwards 5 provides the enabling technology for Web services, a rapidly emerging, standards-based paradigm that promises to enable businesses to share data, applications and business processes across the Internet. To that end, the product features software applications developed as reusable components that interoperate with current and legacy technology, enabling companies to match specific software components to specific business requirements while maintaining the value of their IT investments. Combined with a flexible pricing package, this should provide customers the opportunity to purchase software according to their business needs and to evolve and diversify their businesses when they are ready (i.e., "in small bites with a small chew", rather than traditionally "in one big bite and a long chew").
A few weeks later in June, during its annual FOCUS user group conference, J.D. Edwards announced new and enhanced information technology (IT) services offerings as a follow-up to its May 21 announcement of J.D. Edwards 5. The company hopes to swing the industry's approach to implementing software back into balance, with implementation, education and support services that are both cost effective and tailored to the customer's unique needs, but, at the same time, also a repeatable "standard" implementations that yield better costs and predictability, thereby mitigating risk and minimizing total cost of ownership (TCO).

As many IT services vendors have vacillated in recent years between customized "one-off" and rapid "cookie-cutter" implementation approaches, J.D. Edwards is attempting to blend the best of both approaches. From this philosophy comes OneMethodology, an enhanced implementation methodology, which should offer customers an integrated set of consulting and education services based on their specific business and implementation needs. J.D. Edwards' consultants will supposedly dynamically configure an activity-based implementation work plan based on the customer's unique goals, business processes and desired level of involvement using tools built on a knowledge base of 25 years of experience.

J.D. Edwards Education Services, particularly through the company's so called Process Flow Training, also takes a "listen first" policy to ensure the training plan meets the customer's requirements, then works with the implementation team to coordinate, tailor, and deliver the training needed to provide a custom solution. The ultimate goal is to help each customer achieve self-sufficiency with the software, which, however, should not mean the customer has to carry it on alone. As its customers' long-term partner, J.D. Edwards claims to be bucking the industry trend of reducing support offerings to just one or two levels, as it has not only retained its four levels of support (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum), but it also has introduced several advanced self-service support components available to customers and the new Platinum Premier support offering.

During FOCUS, J.D. Edwards further announced the release of ERP 8.0, unveiling significant upgrades to its widely used ERP software as part of J.D. Edwards 5. Companies in the service industries, which reportedly account for approximately one-third of J.D. Edwards' license revenue, should especially benefit from these improvements, which focus on optimizing employee resources and effectively managing high-value assets. In addition, the company announced that its eXternal Process Integration (XPI) integration platform is now enabled to accommodate the rapidly evolving Web services standards. ERP 8.0 incorporates architectural improvements that should supposedly make it simpler to implement, more user-friendly, and easier to manage, scale, and upgrade.

For users, ERP 8.0 delivers the following major new functionality:

* Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) technology typically allows enterprises to maximize the value and productivity of capital-intensive assets, as it can reduce operating costs, increase asset utilization and decrease inventory, resulting in a direct increase in incremental revenue. New EAM functionality in ERP 8.0 includes Resource Assignments, which optimizes staff deployment using human resources calendars to select and assign staff to projects based on their availability, current backlog, priorities and workday schedules.

* J.D. Edwards Workforce Management, on its hand, provides a suite of products that meets a broad range of human resource needs, as more functions are pushed out via the Internet to the employees and managers of a business. Select Workforce Management functionality highlights for ERP 8.0 include Time & Expense Management, and Multi-currency Time Accounting.

* Using J.D. Edwards Project Management, organizations should effectively manage the complex projects with all the detail required to see a realistic picture of a job's progress, as users can track the status of a job, examine contracts and explore scenarios. It also gives companies an integrated view of subcontract activity for multiple projects in order to monitor the combined efforts of all players involved. Select Project Management functionality highlights for ERP 8.0 offer strong billing capabilities, allowing for customized service, timely billing and efficient account management, including Not-To-Exceed functionality, and Contract Retainage processing.

* Finally, announced as part of the rollout of J.D. Edwards 5, J.D. Edwards Real Estate Management should give companies the power to strategically manage property, space and square footage use and increase the visibility into tenant sales to improve revenue potential. Select new features improve retail portfolio management capabilities, including Sales Forecasting (the forecasting of tenant sales information to maximize occupancy) and Lease Option Tracking.

Furthermore during FOCUS, J.D. Edwards announced the updates to its Advanced Planning offering, including significant enhancements to its "Supply Chain Management (SCM)" and "Collaboration and Integration" offering groups within J.D. Edwards 5 for companies in manufacturing and distribution industries. Relevant to both mid-market and larger enterprises, businesses should benefit from new applications and capabilities, including:

Demand Consensus is a collaborative forecasting application that combines human projections with historical data. While statistical forecasting methods can create certain forecast improvements, J.D. Edwards' research indicates that the addition of collaborative human forecasts can improve the accuracy by another 20%. To that end, Demand Consensus is a Web-based application that brings planners, sales, executives, operations, customers, and suppliers together in a collaborative conference room environment to produce better forecasting results. This application shares information with other J.D. Edwards planning applications, such as Demand Planning, which might create a powerful combination of forecasting applications and short-range planning. Significant enhancements to Demand Consensus include:

* A new reconciliation tool that tracks and measures each stakeholders' historical forecast accuracy, weighting more accurate forecasters' projections to generate more accurate forecasts for the enterprise;

* Message board capabilities to collaborate and track forecast changes; and

* The flexibility to import and export data from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets directly into or from the Demand Consensus application

Based on its Strategic Network Optimization (SNO) application, Tactical Network Optimization (TNO) provides a simpler interface to this powerful solution, giving mid-sized enterprises the power to plan and optimize the design of their production and distribution networks, and thereby reduce overall operating costs. By providing a simpler graphical interface, visualization tools, wizards, templates, and removing such complex functionality as scenario planning, J.D. Edwards is again targeting mid-sized enterprises, which need a simpler solution for their limited needs which also tightly integrates to their existing ERP backbone. Using TNO, these businesses should be able to make critical supply chain decisions and increase efficiencies by, e.g.: Visualizing the full supply chain, Optimizing supply chain profit, Viewing supply chain costs in detail, and Examining manufacturing constraints by plant.

New collaborative capabilities in J.D. Edwards' Production & Distribution Planning (PDP) application now allow customers and suppliers to share detailed information over the Internet, as Web access to company supply chain data lets many more partners directly participate in the supply chain planning process. Using PDP, trading partners can review, add or change production schedules as needed, based on their role in the supply chain.

Best Software To Hold Competition At Bay Part Four: Challenges & User Recommendations

The downside, as a rule, is the painstaking integration effort yet to be devised for a number of remaining products in the Sage's/Best's family and to be subsequently exerted, as there is always a large time bracket from concept to actual materialization. The mitigating factor for impending integration was the fact that Best's progenitor and former Intercat had long formed the product alliance, so the integration task had not started from scratch. However, this might not be the case for the rest of the product portfolio, and as integration is never a simple feat anyway despite SalesLogix' proverbial Open CRM' initiative and a number of mid-market ERP product alliances and subsequent product integration experiences (deals with Exact Macola, Intuitive Manufacturing Systems, Made2Manage, and Expandable Software being some, as a matter of interest). A quite similar situation is with Abra HR/Payroll product that, likewise SalesLogix in the CRM market, has a prominence in the SME HR market, and has been used via many OEM or any other arrangements by a slew of vendors.

Best Software will still have to address other challenges in order to continue to thrive in this ruthless competitive environment. The competition is flying from many directions since the company competes in many diverse markets. To that end, in the traditional back-office market, the threat comes from the likes of Intuit and AccountMate in the small business accounting market, via its peers (e.g., MBS, ACCPAC, Exact Software, Epicor, and Scala to name only some), to the Tier 1 vendors storming down the market. In the pure HR/Payroll mid-market, its archrivals have long been ADP, Employease, Ultimate Software, Agresso, and Lawson, while in the pure-CRM mid-market, that would be the likes of Onyx, Pivotal, Kana, E.Piphany, Salesforce.com and FrontRange. Not to mention that SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards will likely be faced in all the above markets as well.

Also, despite the seemingly well crafted marketing campaign, the Best Software brand is still much less-known than those of its individual products, e.g., ACT!, SalesLogix, or Peachtree. The company will, for some time to come, still likely suffer from either the "Best who?" syndrome and/or will be confused with the former Abra or FAS provider only. Additionally, the wealth of corporate names and a likely unwieldy slew of products within each of Sage's divisions and groups, presents sales and marketing confusion for the company, both internally and externally across the globee. Sage is not exactly uniformly a global company, as its product offerings differ for different markets. For instance, while the Best brand will be applicable for the North American market, Sage offers for the other international markets a disparate line of products for small business comparable to the above-mentioned Best's line (e.g., Instant Accounting for a single user, Line 50 (for up to 5 users), Line 200 (5-25 users) and Line 500 (up to 1,000 users). While Best Software's (f.k.a. Sage Software) MAS 500 manufacturing modules come from last year's purchase of ERP vendor Haitek Solutions, Line 500 comes from the Sage Group's 1999 acquisition of Tetra, a UK-based mid-market ERP vendor. These deals have consequently resulted in different ERP products offered by different units of the Sage Group. After the Tetra acquisition, The Sage Group formed Sage Enterprise Solutions, based in the UK, which offered an ERP suite initially called Sage Enterprise (renamed recently into Line 500). Therefore, the one face to the customers' motto might only be applicable within certain markets per se, e.g., North America, the UK, or France, and very unlikely across the globe.
Furthermore, while Sage has a myriad of products in its portfolio that could benefit from integration with ACT!, Abra, FAS and/or SalesLogix, the company must clearly send the message that most of these already integrate with MAS 90, MAS 200 and MAS 500 (the only exception being ACT! and MAS 500), and articulate its plans and the timeline for any still outstanding integration for between its products. Otherwise, it may face confusion and/or anxiety amongst both its current and potential customers as well as within its VARs. While the idea to enable the R&D team to gain economies of scale by leveraging the same technology foundation to build common application components as commodities that can be deployed within the entire product portfolio is tempting and promising in a very long run, it will only happen in three years time in the best case scenario, and only for Best Software's offerings in North America. The mitigating factor is the fact that, before that long-term evolution takes place, data and personalization setups will be transferable all the way up from entry-level products to enterprise-class systems, making migrations smoother.

Room for functional enhancements remains too, despite some of the products' leading positions. To that end, Best will likely have to build or acquire additional CRM functional enhancements (e.g., database-based marketing management, data mining/analytics, and support for field service) to round out a complete CRM suite. Not to mention the need to bolster MAS 500's external/field service and multilingual capabilities, well beyond only English and Spanish. The vendor has also been working on extending its web integration side as to bolster its private trade exchange (PTX) and/or collaborative role-based portal solutions strategy and delivery. The company has also only recently extended its reach in the professional service automation (PSA) area, with the above-mentioned additional project management enhancements to MAS 500 Suite that should make it competitive with the above-mentioned peers. Nevertheless, Best Software is a company that delivers products based on understanding of its customers' needs, of the competitive forces in the market, and on constant adaptability.

Best Software To Hold Competition At Bay Part Three: Market Impact

As the small-to-medium enterprises (SME) market battle rages, Best Software seems to be taking appropriate steps to establish itself as a more visible/audible force to be reckoned with. It does not intend to remain a tacit mid-market powerhouse any longer. Given its parent's notable revenue level coming close the, e.g., J.D. Edwards' revenue, and being higher than those of Geac, Baan, Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS), SSA GT and Lawson Software, making it an ultimate juggernaut within the SME market per se, the time has come for Best Software's mind share to become proportional to its size. Enter its long incumbent status and proverbial focus on the SME marketplace, its impressive product portfolio assembled through a number of sensibly acquired solutions that address the needs of the market segment, its humongous compound customer base (nearly 1.7 million users in the US and nearly 3 million users worldwide, compared to modest' 112,000 and 270,000 MBS' users respectively) and an extensive distribution channel of 6,600 value added resellers (VARs), over 5,000 retail outlets, in addition to telesales, direct email & Web ordering, look for Best Software/Sage as one of the biggest barriers (in addition to Intuit) the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and SAP should face in their entry of the market segment.

Having already captured a lion's share of the market estimated to consist of several millions of small enterprises, and continuing to capture new customers (i.e., with reportedly 47,000 new customers in the US and 120,000 customers worldwide for the first half of 2002), the likes of MBS will likely have a work cut out for them despite their recently unveiled sound strategy and product offering (see Microsoft Lays Enforced-Concrete Foundation For Its Business Solutions).

It is always amazing to see how opposites attract as well as to conversely see how similar some adversaries can be. While it is possible that Best and MBS might have looked over each others' shoulders while doing their recent strategy homework, the more likely scenario is that a broad impeccably integrated horizontal offering with selected vertical enhancements, nurturing resellers network, providing simplified financing and pricing, as well as catering for evolving scalability & migration needs of customers are necessary tenets of the success in the market segment that both contenders will have grasped.

SME customers continue to increasingly realize the importance of seamless integration between front-office and back-office applications, and to consequently look for one strategic vendor (i.e., one throat to choke') to fulfill and be solely accountable for the vast majority of their business application needs, particularly in the lower end of the segment. Also, many of them have long outgrown their entry-level accounting solutions a la QuickBooks, DacEasy or Peachtree, and are looking to its original provider for functional expansion opportunities in contact management/sales force automation (SFA), CRM, HR/Payroll, and so on. Often in that quest, they turn to a trusted adviser (e.g., their accountant) for an advice.

Therefore, the above-announced (see Part One for Details) enhancements of Abra HR/Payroll suite, SalesLogix CRM package and the well-liked ACT! contact manager application, as well as the addition of vertical add-on solutions to the Best's existing ERP product array should indeed render Best Software an enterprise application vendor with a wide-range footprint covering, inter alia, CRM, HR/payroll, fixed asset management, manufacturing & distribution, time & expense tracking, budgeting, project accounting, fundraising & fund tracking, and general financials/accounting software packages. Not to mention the well-attuned value proposition for its resellers within all distinct vertical segment.

While most vendors targeting mid-market customers should be intimidated by the fact that a number of the large enterprise applications vendors are trying to sway into their space (see SAP Tries Another, Bifurcated Tack At A Small Guy and PeopleSoft Internationalizes Its Mid-Market Forays), the above facts will have given confidence to Best's CEO's claim that his company continues to "take the oxygen out of the room" for growth in the mid-market for intruding vendors. Its formidable slew of products comes as a result of multiple years of the parent Sage Group's effort to rake up a pile of software products through a bevy of acquisitions, although many with a common thread. Companies such as former specialty products providers Best Software, Interact Commerce and Peachtree Software, all had strong brand recognitions in their respective target niches and a market presence in the SME market in which Sage had long specialized as well.
Sage's decision to finally group its plethora of enterprise-level applications in North America under the Best brand, although a virtue created out of necessity (due to the brand name conflict lawsuit's verdict), emanates from the company's feat to deliver highly integrated components, many of them with almost best-of-breed traits. Individually, both Interact and the old-new Best Software have long respectively been delivering attractive front-office/back-office solutions for small and mid-size organizations. Offering all of these products now under the Best Software master brand has a potential to provide customers with integrated CRM, accounting, and business management solutions they need to compete in today's ever-changing and evermore competitive environment.

For more than two decades, the evolving and ever-growing software company has strived to deliver easy-to-use, scalable and customizable applications through its portfolio of renowned brands, including Abra, MAS 90, MAS 200, MAS 500, FAS, Micro Information Products (MIP) NonProfit Series, Peachtree, Timeslips, Platinum for Windows (PfW), ACT! and SalesLogix, among many others. To communicate the nascent notion of the Best Software brand most effectively to prospective customers, the company has recently begun an aggressive awareness campaign, with the following three core messages hoped to strike a chord with the target market:

1. Best Software has insights for the life of small and mid-sized business, given its longevity (more than a quarter century) within the small and mid-sized business (SMB) marketplace.

2. Best Software provides integrated Front-Office and Back-Office Solutions

3. Best Software provides ease of product migration, as its product lines supposedly work together, allowing customers to migrate easily to more sophisticated Best Software solutions as their needs change.

Moreover, to address the needs of its evolving customers in need of software upgrade/migration, Best now offers a customer migration center, as well as a migration strategy aimed at helping the higher-end companies within its small business base that are ready to move to the mid-market and beyond what its lower-end Peachtree or BusinessWorks Gold software can offer. The company has long taken steps to adopt a migration strategy under the "Keeping it in the family" mantra, as it has been offering its own life cycle path (i.e., Peachtree to MAS90 and MAS 200 to the MAS 500 suite), and more recently the similar migration path from the ACT! contact management application to SalesLogix, a more comprehensive and customizable CRM suite.

In fact, Best is counting on its growth coming primarily from the migration of its smaller customers to its mid-market enterprise software, as ~68% of its revenue currently comes from the installed base activities (i.e., support contracts & maintenance, upgrades, payroll services, training, etc.). Moreover, in addition to the first half of fiscal year 2002 migration statistics mentioned earlier, more than 285,000 customers maintain their support contracts, providing a stable recurring revenue stream to the vendor in these days of reduced activity in the market.
Another trump for Best Software would be the fact that it could spar with MBS on many levels and even in the areas one would expect Microsoft to be superior. For one, as mentioned many times earlier and likewise its revered foe, Best offers multiple flavors of enterprise systems to accommodate varying needs across the range of company sizes and industries, albeit with much clearer delineation and less internal competition between the products. These start with low-cost desktop' solutions like Peachtree and ACT!, both sold primarily through retailers as well, like MS Office. While nobody will dispute Microsoft's brand equity, Best could find its consumer product equivalent in ACT! that has long become beloved by the salespeople who use it.

ACT! 6.0, like all the versions before it, is designed to replicate the way a sales rep thinks and acts, without coercing a particular awkward sales process or requiring much, if any, additional effort to record or attach data. To that end, the new Contact Lookup feature lets the user schedule periodic searches to mine detail data from his/her contact records without scrolling through all the contacts to locate it. One can also track accounts that need attention by scheduling regular searches, to be performed within certain date ranges, to, e.g., find customers who made no purchases within that time, and then set up an automatic e-mail merge to remind them of the offering. Moreover, one can also set reminders to pop up alarms with all pertinent information for an appointment before a meeting begins. The ability to schedule activities with regularly occurring events is also attractive however trivial it may sound, while the reminder will activate an alarm even if ACT! is not running. The list of neat features goes on to challenge any other equivalent product's capabilities.

Going up-range and extending the organizational reach, SalesLogix 6.0 seems to be positioned well to fend off the upcoming newcomer Microsoft CRM product by offering seemingly more mature and broader functionality, both on the user side and the administrative side, with a built-in workbench running on Microsoft's VB Scripting. The new release appears to further address one of the biggest challenges for earlier-generation CRM applications, which has been remote synchronization for the remote client side users, and departing from data synchronization architecture based on cumbersome flat files in the direction of relational databases. In addition to the web-enabled product, SalesLogix offers tight integration with Microsoft Office products, which makes it easy for small to mid-size businesses to better utilize pre-existing applications, and make them less amenable to switchover to Microsoft CRM. Best would be a case in point of MBS' competitors swiftly coming up with their CRM products' Outlook and Office integration (which is anticipated Microsoft CRM strong selling feature) while further establishing their expertise in some vertical industries.
Coming to enterprise systems, MAS 90 is targeted at medium-sized companies with 10 to 500 employees, and features more than 25 accounting, light manufacturing, distribution, and e-commerce modules. MAS 200 is the client/server version of MAS 90, and handles higher transaction volumes, and supports multiple databases, including Microsoft SQL Server. Smaller companies with up to 50 employees are covered by BusinessWorks Gold, which, with 11 integrated modules and strong reporting tools, was devised to bridge the gap between entry-level products and MAS 90. As for stalwart specialty HR/payroll products, include Abra Suite for smaller organizations or Abra Enterprise for mid-market users, which together have a large user base of approximately 15,000 customers in different vertical markets. The system supports more than 4,000 tax jurisdictions and all standard government reports that can be filled electronically, while industry-specific reports are also available.

As the top of the range, MAS 500 (formerly marketed as Best Enterprise Suite and before that Acuity Financials) from Best's Mid-Market Division, is an integrated, SME-focused, international ERP package with multi-currency capabilities, targeted at companies above $25 million in annual revenue and with over 20 to 1,000 employees. It is web-enabled, with browser access to the entire functionality, via Terminal Services, business alerts, and workflow management. The package combines e-commerce, distribution, manufacturing, project accounting and financial functions, and integrates with SalesLogix CRM. It features strong financials and project accounting functionality, and solid manufacturing (including a product configurator, engineering change management (ECM), materials requirement planning (MRP), and advanced planning & scheduling (APS)). Particularly strong is distribution functionality, with robust inventory replenishment and supply chain visibility capabilities, which has prompted MBS' recent acquisition of Trinity Myridas and its partnership with Preactor to close this functional inferiority.

Best has recently bolstered the manufacturing capabilities of the solution as well. Among the recent enhancements is a visual, rule-based �drag and drop' scheduling board that electronically simulates the magnetic white board (Gannt Chart) found in many production scheduling offices. Another is an alert system that tracks key activities and measurements, and notifies the responsible individuals via e-mail or pager when something needs their attention.

The upcoming product release promises migration tools that facilitate moving data from the legacy system in place, and in particular tools to move data from MAS 90 and MAS 200. Moreover, the product blends its financial and accounting modules with Abra HR/Payroll, FAS Fixed Asset Management and analytics offerings from Best's Specialty Products Division. Also, project accounting, a number of pre-built integration hooks to popular third-party applications, extensive drill down' and drill around' navigational capabilities, and authentic customization tools (particularly the intuitive screen customization tool, used by ordinary' less IT-oriented users, and with the ability to track/preserve changes for seamless future product upgrades), represent another set of attractive features. Supported platforms are Windows NT/2000/XP and Microsoft SQL Server databases.

Best Software To Hold Competition At Bay Part Two: Strategy

However, as to address its go-to-market strategy to entice early prospective customers and to keep infinitely content both its customers and partners, on October 1, Best Software announced its strategy to enhance customer interaction and partner programs across its diverse, ever-expanding portfolio of business-management solutions for small-to-mid-sized organizations, including ACT!, Abra, CPASoftware, FAS, MAS 90, MAS 200, MAS 500, MIP, Peachtree and SalesLogix, among others. Best's CEO Ron Verni addressed the company's evolving business plans at its first-ever media event bringing together key corporate strategists from across the company. Best Software, created through a series of both horizontal and vertical solutions acquisitions, announced several new programs designed to offer consistent support, and easy migration and integration among some of its widely used and recognized solutions.

Key themes of Best Software's strategy outline include the following:

* Keeping customers for life;

* Providing one face to all customers and partners;

* Espousing clear market and product strategy;

* Ensuring new customer acquisition;

* Consistently achieving positive results; and

* Continuing targeted company acquisitions

Best Software, which markets its products via retail outlets, a national reseller network and a direct telesales force, reportedly added 47,000 new customers during the first half of this fiscal 2002 year (Oct. 2001 - March 2002), bringing its total to over 1.7 million U.S. customers. Its top objective is to encourage customers to stay with the company for the life of their business and, in support of this objective, Verni noted that the company also increased support contract penetration to 17% of its installed base during this period, and also increased revenue per support contract by 10%.

Consequently, on December 3, Best Software announced that its UK-based parent company, the Sage Group plc, reported revenues of $815 million for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2002, an increase of 14% over the prior fiscal year. Operating income for fiscal year 2002 was $212 million, an increase of 12% over the prior year, and earnings per share increased 11% over the prior year to $0.11. Total revenue for The Sage Group's US businesses, for the year ended September 30, 2002,0 was $409 million, and operating income was $85 million, increases of 22% and 29%, respectively, over the same period of the prior year. According to Verni, continued double-digit growth in both revenue and operating income in the US was a result of the company's increasing focus on product cross-selling via its nationwide network of 6,600 business partners to its substantial installed base. In particular, the emphasis on customer up-selling was supported by the ongoing success of Best's effort to migrate additional Peachtree customers to its MAS 90 product.
To augment the success of its installed base support programs, Best Software also announced plans to create a new center to facilitate migrating customers within its diverse product portfolio as their businesses grow. For example, Peachtree customers migrating to MAS 90, reportedly contributed 31% of its new units in the first half of the year, up from 8% three years ago. With these new strategies in place and the creation of its new customer migration center, Best believes customers will have even greater incentives to stay with Best Software as their businesses expand, and the company fully expects to continue to acquire businesses and organizations that complement its strategy.

Reinforcing its "customer for life" commitment, Best Software's new migration center is designed to support customers as they consider new or different platforms for their businesses, and help them through the decision-making process and conversion decisions that face them. As a business grows, managing more employees, larger revenue bases and a growing business gets more complex. Best Software continues to see an increase in its customer demand for their business management solutions. As part of the announcement, customers can receive a 20% discount off the purchase price when moving from Peachtree to MAS90 or receive 0% financing for three years for product and services.

Best Software believes its portfolio of accounting to full-fledged ERP solutions from Peachtree to MAS 500 should offer customers an opportunity to stay with the single vendor as their businesses grow, as each year, Best Software reportedly continues to see an increase in its migration customers. In the first half of 2002, its Mid-Market Division reportedly witnessed 22 % of all new MAS 500 customers migrate from Peachtree. The company has also seen early migration success with its Nonprofit and Government Division, as 15% of new customers migrated from Peachtree to MIP. Finally, its CRM Division recorded that 10% of all new SalesLogix customers have prior ACT! experience.

The Best Software migration center is planned to open in early 2003, and it will be comprised of employees uniquely focused on helping customers migrate from one Best platform to another. Currently handled out of multiple different organizations with Best Software (i.e., Small Business Division featuring Peachtree and Timeslips product, and Specialty Products Division featuring FAS, Abra, Carpe Diem and TimeSheet Professional products , in addition to the above three) this centrally-located group will support Best customers as they consider new/different platforms for their business.
Furthermore on the same day, Best Software announced the formation of the Best Software Partner Advantage program, which should provide an array of benefits to Best's reselling business partners, including training, financing, guaranteed lead-generation and alliances with resellers carrying other Best Software products. Best Software has possibly the largest and most successful reseller channel in the industry, with 6,600 partners. Available in November, the new program could help Best Software partners compete even more effectively by offering a number of key benefits:

* Training in solution selling, lead generation, demo skills, partnering with non-reselling certified public accountants (CPAs), product implementation and other mission-critical skills.

* Guaranteed lead-generation programs which promise a guaranteed number of qualified leads to participants.

* Zero percent (0%) financing for three years for customers migrating between Best Software product platforms. Offered in conjunction with American Express since August, the program has already generated close to $1 million in approved transactions.

* Alliance programs that will help partners increase their business by working with Best Software partners who carry complementary Best Software products.

Best Software To Hold Competition At Bay

On the same day, Best Software announced the availability of version 6.0 of SalesLogix, one of the leading small business and mid-market CRM products, which is reportedly built on a new architecture and with more than 200 product enhancements. The SalesLogix architecture was reportedly enhanced to increase developer productivity, enable quicker customization, and lower implementation time and costs, since the product is based on a 3-tier architectural environment with a standardized toolset for open development and possibly a rapid deployment. The architecture should facilitate data integration with applications built in Microsoft's Visual Basic, Visual Studio .NET (VS.NET), or any other development environment that supports Microsoft ADO (ActiveX Data Object) data access.

The new architecture should also allow for backward compatibility with existing customizations and add-on products, simplifying thereby the upgrade process for customers and partners. SalesLogix' administrators running SalesLogix 6.0 should also reduce the time spent on manual tasks by using the streamlined new-user entry process with user profile templates and the simple, flexible user and team security controls. Other enhanced processes include: account permission configuration for teams, advanced territory realignment with scenario analysis, improved integrity checking to eliminate "orphan" accounts, and easy identification of users and teams that have access to an account. In addition to the new architecture, users should benefit from the following enhancements:

* Sales Client User Interface — Users should now be able to manage multiple addresses within account and contact records, create account hierarchy and navigate among parent and subsidiary accounts, and launch customer and prospect location maps, websites, and e-mail with one-click web access. In addition, SalesLogix 6.0 will also ship with Crystal Reports version 8.5.

* Tighter integration with Microsoft Office — SalesLogix 6.0 reportedly offers one-click export to Excel for analysis and reporting. In addition, the product offers Word integration for �mail merge' facility and advanced Outlook integration.

* Significant Mail Merge improvements — This feature should be easier to use with template management; merge at contact, account, opportunity, or group level; and the ability to automatically exclude individuals based on their solicitation preferences. Users can now also attach a record or copy of the e-mail and attachments to a recipient's history records and automatically schedule activities as part of sales or marketing workflow.

* New AutoSync feature — For mobile employees, the product will now automatically synchronize in the background when a web connection is available, while employees can work without disruption, and no longer having to remember to manually synchronize their data when returning to the office.

* Enhanced Web Client functionality — SalesLogix customers should enjoy Outlook and Excel integration, Crystal Enterprise web reporting, mail merge with customizable e-mail templates, and the groups and query builder. The Web user interface has been updated with an improved design and additional functionality to mirror the rich functionality of the SalesLogix Windows client.

* Improved Support WebTicket — Designed to improve ticket workflow management, the Support WebTicket has a look and navigation that is very similar to the SalesLogix Support Client. Enhancements include: integrated knowledge base with keyword highlighting and automatic creation of frequently asked questions (FAQs); customer self-service portal with two-way communication; addition of activities and attachments to tickets by both employees and customers; and employee visibility to defects, return material authorizations (RMAs), and ticket changes.

Further, in August, Best Software announced the availability of ACT! version 6.0, one of the most comprehensive contact management product released yet. With over 50 new features, ACT! 6.0 is an upgrade for all previous users of ACT! for Windows. The primary focus of this new release is a completely new e-mail client and advanced integration with Microsoft Outlook. The ACT! 6.0 e-mail client has been completely upgraded, as users can now use the new ACT! e-mail as a standalone client or integrate with and view Outlook, Outlook Express, SMTP/POP3 (Internet Mail) and Lotus Notes e-mail folders from within ACT!. Users can set up multiple accounts and view them all from within ACT!.

Because tracking the history of e-mail correspondence is a critical part of contact management, there are three history options that are available when sending e-mail from either ACT! e-mail or Outlook. In addition to traditional e-mail history options such as including the subject line only in the notes section or attaching the full e-mail to the contact record, users now have the option to attach the subject plus the text of the message in the notes section, which may be especially useful to corporate customers with large workgroups working from a single database. Additional new e-mail features include the ability to send and receive HTML e-mails from within ACT!, the ability to instantly add new contacts to any ACT! database, and the ability to access both ACT! and Outlook address books, regardless of the application in which the user is currently working. However, highlights of ACT! 6.0 would include:

* Active Libraries - From the Library Tab, users should now be able to directly attach Microsoft Word/Excel/PowerPoint/MapPoint documents, Adobe Acrobat documents (PDF), JPG files and BMP files to the contact record and view them from within that contact record, without launching a separate application. In addition, these documents can now be edited from that view using all of the native Microsoft Office toolbars and then saved or printed.

* Excel Integration - Using an Excel document that has been attached to the Library Tab, users can map fields from their database to fields in Excel for simple and efficient quoting. One quote sheet template can easily be attached to all the contacts in the database for quick updating and quote generation.

* Contact Activity Look-ups - This data-mining feature should enable users to gain insight into the customers and activities in their database with a few clicks. Users can perform a contact activity look-up to, e.g., uncover which customers they have contacted recently, as well as which ones have not been contacted in a specified time frame. From the look-up they can then schedule follow-up activities, send an e-mail or derive a call list.

* Annual Event Tracking - Another data mining feature, which should enable users to specify any date fields in their database as annual events. By doing this, users can manage their events such as birthdays, anniversaries, and policy renewals with a simple annual event look-up, which should give them advance notice of the event so they have time to react appropriately.

* Enhanced Internet Services - Now, users can access Web sites from within ACT!, using the built-in Internet Browser, and attach relevant Web pages to one or more contacts. The pages are saved as offline Web pages so users can access the information even when they are not connected, or when the page is no longer available online.

* HTML E-mail Templates The product comes with 10 HTML e-mail templates for everything from birthdays to e-newsletters to order confirmations. Using the new mail-merge wizard users should be able to correspond with their customers in a professional and efficient manner.