JD Edwards will get mags to market

By ADAM GIFFORD

Magazine distributor Gordon and Gotch is about to go live on JD Edwards One World Xe business management software.

General manager Lynley Belton said the 90-seat system, which Gordon and Gotch is calling iMag, cost about $3 million, of which just under a third was licenses for the financial and distribution modules. JD Edwards managed the implementation.

The system, which runs on an Oracle database on Compaq Windows 2000 servers, is in its final testing, with the switch over due on October 29.

"From what we have seen so far it's looks easier to use and more flexible, and the big thing for us is it offers a platform to build new services for publishers and retailers," Ms Belton said.

The company currently runs a 15-year old legacy system which it maintains itself.

"We went looking for an off the shelf system we could customise."

She said the magazine distribution business has features which make unique demands on software.

"As a distributor we don't take orders as such, we push to retailers, and we need to be able to do historical allocations to determine what orders should be.

"On the other side standard accounts payable systems don't meet the way we pay publishers. We tend to have progress payments with different formulas from publisher to publisher."

To analyse sales, iMag integrate with the Cognos PowerPlay business intelligence tool.

It is also linked to specialised picking and packing products.

"We have 4000 titles which we get to 7000 outlets up to five times week, so our logistics demand is high and our transactions are high," Ms Belton said.

She said iMag should lower transaction costs and help the company to interact better with retailers.

"We have to work together to sell the product. To work more effectively we felt we needed a stronger platform and one which better supports electronic interaction."

Each month the company produces over one million documents in the form of invoices, statements and recall notices. The new system can to identify the number of transactions associated with each specific retailer.

"There will be savings for the retail trade because they will not have to key invoices. We are also working on other parts of the distribution chain in terms of how we can manage returns in a more electronic format."

The deal was an important win for JD Edwards in a year in which it dominated sales of enterprise software in the New Zealand market.

The other short listed company, Intentia, missed out because at the time the deal was done it was not able to offer a solution on Windows NT, and Gordon and Gotch did not want to be restricted to an AS/400 platform.

JD Edwards Australian and New Zealand managing director Bob Trbojevich said new licence sales have now slowed, but the company is being kept busy with upgrades and extra licenses within its existing customer base.

He said for the first nine months of the financial year software revenue is up 57 percent and services revenue up 20 percent.

Mr Trbojevich, who took over when New Zealander Richard Mathews was promoted to run JD Edwards' operations outside the Americas, has taken direct charge of New Zealand.

He opted not to replace country manager David Batkin, who has taken on a new international project role reporting to Mr Mathews, and instead has a sales director and a services director based in Auckland.

"It means if there are issues they escalate to me without a lot of structures in the way. Under the old system, because you had individuals running individual region, people would address the rules in different ways," Mr Trbojevich said.

"We have more customers now, so it's important we address situations at senior management level."

He said much of the effort over the next year will go into integrating YOUcentric, a customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation software company JD Edwards has just bought.

The acquisition spells the end of the Denver company's alliance with CRM giant Siebel.

JD Edwards New Zealand had been unsuccessfully trying to sell the Siebel for Workgroups product, which was aimed at the mid market.

"We did manage several sales in Australia, but they were often standalone deals which is not our preferred solution," Mr Trbojevich said.