|
Red Wing Taps Lawson for Business Intelligence Offering
Published: August 1, 2006
by Alex Woodie
The merger between Lawson Software and Intentia is complete, and now the combined company is moving forward with plans to sell products into its newly expanded customer base. Yesterday, Lawson announced that the first former Intentia customer to install Lawson-developed software is the Red Wing Shoe Company of Red Wing, Minnesota.
Red Wing Shoes, a longtime AS/400 shop, was an Intentia customer for approximately 2.5 years before Intentia combined with Lawson. The company, which has about $500 million in annual revenue and about 2,000 employees in North America, Europe, and Japan, was in the hunt for a business intelligence (BI) product. Andy Anderson, Red Wing's IT director, explained his product decision.
"We selected Lawson's BI solution because of its rich functionality, ease-of-use, and reputation for helping its customers achieve measurable results," Anderson said. "Moreover, since it is compatible with our existing M3 applications, it was more efficient to incorporate a Lawson product than investing the time and expense into a best-of-breed solution."
In May, soon after the merger was complete, Lawson renamed its products. It gave the former Intentia products the M3 designation (for "make, move, and maintain") while it gave its existing Lawson products the S3 designation (for "staff, source, serve").
The business intelligence software implemented at Red Wing included the core Business Performance Warehouse (BPW) offering, the "M3 Solution Kit," which includes the BPW Runtime engine and three business measurement models--for sales, customers, and procurement--and a Report Pack with 37 pre-built Crystal Reports.
The whole thing makes it easier for Red Wing to collect, analyze, and distribute key performance indicators (KPIs) relating to the distribution of sales, orders, and shipment information from its three American factories, its single Japan factory, and its European offices.
|
