BLIS-400 Gets Hooks into IntelliChief

January 13, 2009 Alex Woodie

Foundries and companies in the die cast industry that use the latest release of B&L Information Systems‘ BLIS-400 ERP system will now be able to leverage the content management capabilities of Quadrant Software‘s IntelliChief suite much more easily than in the past, thanks to enhanced integration between the two products, the companies announced this week.

BLIS-400 version 7, which the Bridgman, Michigan-based company launched at its annual user conference in September, features more well-defined integration points to IntelliChief for the areas of accounts payable, accounts receivable, order processing, purchasing, shipping, and receiving, the companies said.

Doug Hinman, vice president of research and development for B&L, says the company partnered with Quadrant Software many years ago–before the launch of IntelliChief– due to its understanding of the needs of customers in the metal casting industry and its expertise on the IBM iSeries.

Now that IntelliChief is Quadrant’s flagship document management offering, more work was needed to closely integrate the products. “It was critical that we provide our clients a single-source option for meeting their document management needs,” Hinman says.

The integration enables BLIS-400 users to accomplish many document-related tasks–such as capturing or managing purchase orders, retrieving vendor invoices, or distributing packing slips–directly from their ERP screens. But much of the work of routing the documents will be done behind the scenes by IntelliChief.

Having a slick integration between the two products helps keep things simple for users, says Gary Langton, CEO and co-founder of Quadrant Software, which is based in Tampa, Florida. “The beauty of working closely together with B&L to eradicate integration concerns ultimately benefits the ERP user, who can continue using BLIS-400 in their daily operations with the added ability to find and distribute documents electronically without having to leave their desks in search of paper files,” he says.