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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Activant Solutions Introduces Prophet 21 version 12.0

Enhanced User Interface Drawing Rave Reviews

Activant Solutions Inc. announces the availability of Activant® Prophet 21® software version 12.0.

"Before we began writing code for Prophet 21 version 12.0, we did an in-depth analysis of industry trends, including having extensive conversations with our customers, to determine what features to include," said Kevin Roach, executive vice president of Activant. "Our goal with this release of the Prophet 21 software is to help distributors increase efficiencies in their business, helping them through this recession so they will be positioned to take advantage of the opportunities expected to arise during the economic recovery."

Currently more than 1,500 distributors have invested in Prophet 21 software, making it a leading enterprise software solution for the distribution industry. Prophet 21 version 12.0 builds upon existing functionality and is designed to further assist distributors increase sales, improve customer service and reduce operating expenses. Among the many features in Prophet 21 version 12.0 is an enhanced user interface.

"There are a lot of great features in Prophet 21 version 12 that allow us to streamline our processes," said Michael Dean, IT Manger for Power & Pumps Inc. in Jacksonville, FL. "The search bar and my menu options improve our workflow and make it easier to move through the system."

Jennifer Buschmann, president of EA Buschmann Inc. in Lewiston, ME, agrees: "The updated user interface has a lot of potential for the user to customize screens to fit the individual user’s specific needs," she said. "The extended description view and field chooser features are two features we are extremely excited to have."

Many Valuable Features

In addition to the enhanced user interface, new customer relationship management (CRM) tools provide ready access to information, allowing users to streamline their day-to-day processes while improving customer service.

Attributes of the Prophet 21 software's production order and secondary processing functions have been combined into a labor tracking, job costing process that provides true light manufacturing capabilities. Distributors may assign technicians, track labor costs, and issue necessary material through a series of processes that manage the entire production process, whether the manufacturing stages are completed by the distributor or a third party.

The Wireless Warehouse Management Solution (WWMS) Workbench capability is designed as a tool for the warehouse manager/supervisor to dynamically manage the flow of transactions within their warehouse operation. The workbench is a dynamic list of transactions ready to pick that can be sorted, grouped and moved about in an ad hoc manner. Transactions at the top of the list can be quickly pushed to an available employee. Other warehouse tasks are also displayed and sorted by a user-defined hierarchy and can be pushed to the employee in the warehouse in accordance with that hierarchy. Also, the workbench feature has the capability of dynamically creating group pick tickets, providing a command and control tool for dynamic management of the warehouse picking workload, and providing the capability to push higher priority tasks to available “picking” employees while organizing and balancing usual pick loads. This feature increases the visibility of pickers' tasks, their progress, and their overall performance.

Further enhancing the international capabilities of the Prophet 21 software, Activant has added multi-lingual functionality which allows users to dynamically translate terms used throughout the application. This feature helps increase user productivity by enabling them to use the system in their native language.

To find out more about the Prophet 21 software, visit distribution.activant.com, e-mail distribution@activant.com, or call 1-800-776-7438, press 1.

About Activant Solutions Inc.

Activant Solutions Inc. ("Activant") is a leading technology provider of business management solutions serving retail and wholesale distribution businesses in three primary vertical markets: hardlines and lumber; wholesale distribution; and the automotive parts aftermarket. Founded in 1972, Activant provides customers with tailored proprietary software, professional services, content, supply chain connectivity, and analytics. More than 30,000 customer locations use an Activant solution to manage their day-to-day operations. Activant has operations throughout the United States and Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

For more information, please visit distribution.activant.com.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Translating Strategy into Action

This webinar presented by Jeff Greenberg, CEO at Ergility Smart Process Solutions, on July 29, 2009 at 2:00pm EST, will discuss both how a strategy guides operations and how an incomplete strategy misguides operations. It will also cover developing an operational strategy, setting strategic priorities, and embedding strategy into EVERY operation and task.

To learn more about this free webinar, go to http://www.software4distributors.com/sage/julywebinar/template_ergility.html.

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