LANSA Goes GA with Ecommerce App for Mobile Devices

August 13, 2013 Alex Woodie

Organizations that want to use their IBM i server to deliver e-commerce capabilities to mobile devices may want to check out Commerce Edition Mobile (CE Mobile), a new application that is available now from LANSA. The solution, which LANSA originally announced at the COMMON conference earlier this year, promises to make quick work of the process of exposing product data housed in ERP systems to employees, partners, and customers via iOS and Android devices.

CE Mobile is an RPG application that delivers pre-built functionality for organizations that desire a mobile ecommerce or sales environment that’s closely tied into their back-office ERP systems.

The solution provides, out-of-the-box, features such as: credit card processing, shipment tracking, freight calculation, account and invoice inquiry, and signature capture. The software delivers pre-built, touch-sensitive, catalogs with search functionality. Pre-built integration is also offered for more than 16 popular IBM i-based ERP systems, such as JD Edwards World and BPCS.

The product gives mobile personnel the capability to not only look up information contained in the ERP systems, such as contracts, inventory levels, and proposals, but to place and confirm orders on the spot using an Android or iOS smartphone or tablet.

“Our customers seek enterprise mobile application solutions that accelerate revenue, enhance sales performance, and are quick to deploy,” Steve Gapp, president of LANSA Americas, says in a press release. “We’ve designed LANSA Commerce Edition Mobile to deliver business value and ease of use through an innovative mobile application that addresses integration headaches and security concerns.”

The software is an amalgam of two other LANSA products, including its LongRange mobile application, which has been warmly received by IBM i shops since it was unveiled just over a year ago, and LANSA Commerce Edition, a well-established product that LANSA says has been used to generate thousands of ecommerce websites over the years.

LANSA’s new CE Mobile makes it easy to develop and deploy an IBM i-based mobile ecommerce app with deep hooks into ERP systems.

In addition to ecommerce functionality, CE Mobile can be used to deliver reports to sales personnel. The reports are touch-optimized and feature drill-down capabilities to allow users to explore sales data while on the go.

LANSA says the product can be deployed in less than a month, including the installation of the software, integrating with ERP systems, and deploying native apps to Android and iOS devices.

Much of the work of customizing CE Mobile environments is done through configuration changes. But if a customer desires to make a deeper, programmatic change, that’s not a big deal, and they can use their RPG skills to do it, LANSA says.

CE Mobile is composed of a client component that can be downloaded for free from the Google Play store and the Apple App Store, as well as a server component that starts at $15,000. In addition, CE Mobile makes use of and requires customers to purchase LANSA’s LongRange mobile application. LongRange subscriptions supporting an unlimited number of developers, applications, and users cost $10,000 per year. For more information, see www.lansa.com.