OPEN BUSINESS SOLUTIONS OFFERS BEST VALUE WMS YET

Open Business Solutions is today launching a complete warehouse management system (WMS) at an unprecedented price and a guarantee to install within three months.

Costing under 100,000, Calidus-sc is set to raise the bar on value and service and will have a major impact on the market, said the companys product manager Jeremy Pritchard. The application suite is focused on offering UK logistics companies high quality, high specification and a massively functional WMS at an affordable price. Calidus-sc will help users cut costs, improve logistics and gain a return on investment within months not years.

The logistics industry is very dynamic and needs a solution that can respond to unexpected changes and the existing solutions are failing to deliver this level of agility. Pritchard says.

Remarkably, the price includes the warehouse management, sales and purchase order processing applications, server, hardware, installation and a system sized for 20 users. Annual maintenance costs have yet to be finalised but will be among the lowest UK companies have seen.

Additional modules such as transport management (TMS), electronic proof of delivery, integrated RFID and voice solutions are also available, again these are aggressively priced. Calidus-sc too is SAP-certified and provides real integration with the renowned manufacturing and business solution. This is not a superficial link at the user level but genuine accredited integration with SAP at the database level, Pritchard said. This is a strong feature he says as many clients use SAP for manufacturing and then often need both the functional advantages and ease of implementation provided by Calidus-sc. This interface is not just a tick in the box exercise for ITT responses but a specific market intent to come to the aid of logistics users in the SAP community.

Open Business Solutions logistics director Graham Sharpe says Calidus-sc is a business ready solution having been tried, tested and proven at 150 warehouses across Europe. We are confident of installing Calidus-sc within a few weeks as it has been done 150 times before. Rapid and effective implementations give our customers fastest realisation of benefits, which is a key feature of this deal. The solution can stand alone as a complete business system and is popular with 3PL users or remote divisions of corporate clients who find they have to operate in developing economies. They need a comprehensive and easy to install and maintain solution based on industry leading infrastructure.

The use of industry standard technologies eliminates associated risk. The Calidus-sc client runs onWindows platforms and there is a web-based client including reporting for remote users. Taking full advantage of Oracle for the database and running on Intel, SUN, HP and IBM servers, the system has proven configurability, and is easy to modify and maintain. When combined with the ease of initial implementation this provides an unbeatable costs benefits package.

The application comes in a variety of European languages so is suited to multinational operations. Users include manufacturers and 3PLs with Calidus-sc being employed across a vast range of industry sectors including retail, food and beverage and FMCG.