The Accelerator™ from Surround Technologies is designed to help businesses reuse, rewrite and develop new applications, providing a phased modernization strategy without limitations or dead ends. Xperia, an industry leader in enterprise management solutions for the Apparel and Footwear industries, is using the Accelerator to modernize their existing Comprehensiv™ Enterprise System Series IBM i Synon-based system as well as to develop a brand new B2B system which can be branded for each of their customers.
Xperia’s mission is to provide their clients with integrated applications and solutions to manage their operations across the enterprise and their supply chain, from their customer’s customer to their vendor’s vendor. Xperia’s existing applications provide their clients with a global view of their business and links to information in each functional area. Each event entered into their system is immediately translated into its impact on the company, supply chain and customer. Collaboration and planning capabilities are combined with volume-based customer requirements and provide high levels of service to both internal and external customers.
Xperia had already modernized their application using a refacing solution and, for a time was a successful with it. However, they had hit a dead end in what they could do with the technology. They desired to provide their clients with a richer User Experience, UX, and even greater functionality that fully exploited the robust multi-faceted nature of the ExecutivTM Suite itself. Xperia was able to use the power of Accelerator for .NET with Newlook to provide a robust desktop user experience while also maintaining their existing back-end in Synon.
Vendor Master Module
Vendor Master drill down into paid Items
Vendor Master Detail Window
Additionally, Xperia needed an easily navigated on-line product catalog and invoice retrieval system for their customer's customers. They also understand the significance of mobile application trends in technology today and the value that it can provide. Designed to mimic any standard e-commerce website, the new B2B platform needed to be available to existing clients on any browser capable device. This included but was not limited to desktops (PC & Mac), tablets and mobile devices. They knew it was time to begin the process of creating a multi-platform capable version which would take their customers into the world of cross-device, cross platform accessibility. Both Desktop Browser and Mobile applications needed functions for search (deep data dive required), filtration and cross catalog linking of data.
The B2B site, which was built in HTML5 using Accelerator and leverages the existing IBM i back-end, provided immediate functionality for business users, allowed for customer branding, and also gave customers the ability to turn on B2C capabilities when required. Automated order intelligence increased efficiency, as a user could now navigate the entire product catalog and add any product to their order without being logged in to that order at the time. Intelligence was built into the system to automatically divert the product inventory to the correct order with which the product was associated.
The UX presentation of the B2B site created with Accelerator provided support for sales personnel to see the same thing as the customer, as well as login and control customer accounts when customer assistance or support was needed. The UX also presented a time-saving productivity boost by allowing users to access present and future inventory availability levels for the product catalog with one click.
The Accelerator from Surround Technologies improved the usability and productivity of the Xperia Comprehensiv™ Enterprise System significantly, and Xperia continues to engage with Surround Technologies to broaden the B2B site as requested by their customers.
On-line catalog
On-line catalog product search.
On-line catalog product style and quantity selection.
