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Eastern Software Systems Pvt. Ltd., a provider of IT products and services, has entered into a distribution agreement with Cote d’Ivore-based Inova Systems D’Informations. (Now how often do you hear of a company based on that lovely bit of Earth?)

Under the agreement, Inova Systems will assist ESS in marketing its flagship ERP product "ebizframe" in Africa’s francophone nations of Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mosambique, Senegal, South Africa and Togo.

Inova Systems will reportedly begin touting the product in the water and electric supply sectors early on, as in these industries the firm’s current presence lies strongest. And company brass has stated their intention to make inroads into the government sector. Inova Systems’ first goal is to add eight ebizframe customers for in the first year of operation with marketing assistance and support from ESS personnel.

ESS’ ebizframe is a mid-range, web-enabled ERP specifically targeted at the mid-market segment and based on Oracle 10g and Developer2000. In addition to Windows, ebizframe also runs on Red Hat Linux. The program is designed for use in manufacturing, distribution, trading and/or retail environments.

ESS has successfully implemented ebizframe in industry verticals including auto ancillaries, engineering, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, textiles, garments, hospitality, and retail in India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Mauritius.

Representatives of Encompix have announced that G.H. Tool & Mold has implemented the Encompix ERP system.

Located in Washington, Mo., G.H. Tool & Mold specializes in the design and manufacture of turnkey die cast and trim die projects. The company’s customer consists of automotive, lawn and garden, and other industrial applications; G.H. also supports the aerospace industry with five-axis machining capabilities and mold repair.

G.H. Tool & Mold replace its old unnamed ERP system with Encompix. “We really needed a system built for an engineer-to-order, not make-to-order, environment,” said Pat Dolan, G.H. CFO. “We looked at several systems but, overall, Encompix was the best fit.”

Encompix, a business unit of Made2Manage Systems, has specialized in manufacturing software requirements of engineer-to-order companies since 1992.

Founded in 1986, Made2Manage Systems now has over 2,150 customers for their enterprise resource planning software in over thirty manufacturing sectors, including industrial and commercial machinery; fabricated metals; rubber and plastics; electronics; analytical and measuring equipment; furniture and fixtures; durable goods; and metals; wire and cable.

Enterprise resource planning solutions provider Epicor Software Corporation has gotten a mandate from the world’s leadership of the great game of cricket, the International Cricket Council. Epicor execs made the announcement at the GITEX 2006 convention at the Dubai International Exhibition and Convention Centre. GITEX is billed as the “Middle East’s premier IT expo.”

The ICC’s integrated ERP mandate to Epicor will begin with the implementation of Epicor iScala financial management and iScala Active Planner for enterprise-wide budgeting and forecasting. Epicor officials promised that the implementation would assist the cricket entity in “streamlin[ing] its business processes with end-to-end visibility.”

ICC CFO Faisal Hasnain stated that “Our decision to partner with Epicor comes at a time of a rapid expansion of our activities and the need to have an integrated ERP system to further streamline our business processes, reduce costs and save time.” (Is the ICC really expanding activities? Good on ‘em.)

The ICC was founded on June 15, 1909 by Australia, England and South Africa. These three founding members have since been joined by seven full members, 32 associate members and 55 affiliate members, including such well-known cricket hotbeds as Mexico and Cuba.

The Epicor client portfolio now numbers 350 sites in the Middle East and North Africa. Founded in 1984, Irvine, Calif.-based Epicor Software serves over 20,000 customers in more than 140 countries in thirty-one languages. Epicor delivers end-to-end, industry-specific solutions for manufacturing, distribution, retail, hospitality and services.

From the nether side of the world – it doesn’t matter from where your vantage point comes, as long as you’re outside Oceania, it’s the nether side – Steamships Trading Company Limited, a Papua New Guinea trading company, will implement Pronto Software’s flagship ERP product, Pronto-Xi.

Never heard of Steamships Trading? Well, good old ST is listed on the Australian Stock exchange, and is one of the largest private-sector employers in Papua New Guinea with a workforce of over 2500, and has interests in hotels, shipping, transport, properties, manufacturing and hardware.

Steamships Trading representatives stated that their firm is changing management structure, with a strategic objective of providing each business unit quasi-independent operational while simultaneously capturing the requisite financial information for corporate reporting and governance.

Steamships first became familiar with Pronto-Xi via the implementation at Datec PNG, a joint venture subsidiary. Datec was later considered a pilot for the Steamships project after “further investigation showed that Pronto-Xi is able to meet the company’s strategic objectives.”

The folks at Pronto Software, meanwhile, state that the win “cements [the firm’s] position as Papua New Guinea’s marketing leading ERP vendor.”

SourceForge.net has gotten a new release posted to it: CK-ERP 0.21.1 of CK-ERP is now available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ck-erp. The release features connectors for Joomla, Mambo and Drupal. TikiWiki and CRELoaded connectors have gotten augmentation. The solution provides accounting and back office functionalities to SMEs and utilizes the underlying middleware to administer accounts and groups.

CK-ERP is an open source accounting/MRP/ERP/CRM system that runs on top of eGroupWare, XOOPS, Joomla, Mambo, Drupal, Zencart, CRELoaded, osCommerce, Xaraya, Horde, TikiWiki, and phpBB. Twenty modules are included: Administration, i18n, Contact Management, Customer Relationship, Customer Self Service, Vendor Relationship, Ledger, Bank Reconciliation, MRP, Warehouse, Inventory, Service, AP, AR, PO, SO, Quotation, POS for Cashier, POS for Manager, HR, Staff Self Service and Payroll. The operating platform can either be LAMP or LAPP.

Enterprise software company Sage Software released Sage MAS 90 and Sage MAS 200 ACT! Link this week, a solution designed to assist small- and mid-sized businesses in more tightly integrating front and back office operations by linking Sage’s enterprise resource planning programs with the ACT! contact and customer management system.

Sage MAS 90 and Sage MAS 200 ACT! Link provides integration with ACT! by Sage 2007 and ACT! by Sage Premium for Workgroups 2007 launched this September, as well as compatibility with ACT! by Sage 2006 and ACT! by Sage Premium for Workgroups 2006.

MAS 90 and Sage MAS 200 are touted as being able to “anchor an automated business management solution, providing accounting functionality, vertical market modules, business intelligence tools and integration with other business automation products from Sage.”

Pervasive Software Inc. (a decent name), a provider of embeddable data management and integration software, today announced the release of Pervasive Data Integrator and Pervasive Business Integrator version 8.12.

Features touted in release 8.12 include the “Easy Loader” function, billed as “a simple mapping GUI that ISVs can distribute to their end users for wizard-driven creation of data loaders that feed their software as a service or packaged software applications.” The new release also adds adapters to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, Oracle Siebel CRM On Demand, ACUCOBOL GT v. 7 and SQL Server 2005 to its more than 150 extant.

Pervasive Software provides embeddable data management and integration software to enterprises. Pervasive claims “tens of thousands of customers” in “virtually every” industry, in more than 150 countries.

That someone in the kitchen with Dinah may be Access Supply Chain ERP. If it’s a Crosby kitchen, that is.

In about one year of use, joyfully reported Sheffield, UK-based Crosby Kitchens, Access Supply Chain’s ERP solutions can be thanked for achieving twenty percent growth (and in a “fiercely competitive marketplace where businesses are vying for single-digit expansion,” too.)

After seventy years (but only about ten in its reorganized form), the company decide to overhaul IT systems last year, in hopes of providing some growing room. The transition from the (unnamed) old system to the Access solution took less than six months.

Said Crosby managing director Mike Atkin, “A twenty percent increase in business means twenty percent more orders to be picked, twenty percent more products to be delivered – and without a doubt, the new system has helped us to achieve this.”

The newest report published by Aberdeen Group Inc. states that extremely few firms can meet the requirements of the en vogue business philosophy of “Six Sigma.” Six Sigma is essentially a method of quality control that seeks to achieve constant improvement. Strictly speaking, a process must not produce more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities, with “defect” defined as “anything outside of customer specifications.”

If that sounds like a pretty demanding benchmark to you, well, Aberdeen research would tend to agree. According to “The Lean Six Sigma Benchmark,” of the over 400 companies studied (among them Boeing, Glaxo SmithKline, Rexam, Tyco Electronics, EMC, GE, and GM), more than half stated that Six Sigma programs were in effect, but about 16 percent “hold true to the rigorous program with its stringent quality goal, structured problem-solving approach, dedicated training, and the prioritized projects that are the hallmark of Six Sigma philosophies.”

Naturally, the study also found that the 16-or-so percent following the Six Sigma program correctly averaged some 40 percent savings overall and 65 percent more per project. (To this outside observer, it seems pretty clear than having a successful Six Sigma system installed would produce successful results. After all, in most situations a 99.99966 percent success rate is pretty good.)

Aberdeen also showed that those who took a more technology-enabled approach fared much better in lowering defect rates. The report singled out Minitab and SAS JMP for the most impressive levels of quality, “in some instances rivaling or surpassing best-in-class performance.”

Explaining the generally low scores, Aberdeen manufacturing and ERP research vice president Cindy Jutras said, “Adapting to the rigors of Six Sigma requires a significant cultural change for most companies, and many find it a challenge.” Beyond that, she says, “Six Sigma methodologies are dependent on data, so data collection can present significant obstacles. Automated data collection and IT solutions can play a key role in resolving these obstacles.”

As for recommendations, the study offers manufacturers three recommendations to help impart Six Sigma strategies: apply metrics of DPMO (Defects Per Million Opportunities) across all business processes in all industries; identify and prioritize business impact projects according to anticipated savings and improved throughput; and integrate data collection with analysis.

To obtain a free copy of the report, click here. Aberdeen Group, Inc. provides fact-based research and insight focusing on the technology-driven value chain for the Global 5000 value chain, its technology executives, and solution providers.

New Generation Computing, a provider of product lifecycle management, global sourcing solutions and enterprise resource planning software for the apparel and sewn products industries, today announced major enhancements to much of its line.

NGC unveiled the 2006 releases of its RedHorse, e-PDM and e-SPS solutions at Material World New York today.

Product enhancements to RedHorse 2006 ERP include an advanced report generation tool, an enhanced allocation and reservation function, and enhancements in screen design to improve the user experience; to e-PDM 2006 integrated product life cycle management software, improvements come to calendars, product specs, line planning, merchandising and costing functions; and to e-SPS2006 global sourcing software are included significant enhancements to the quality and logistics modules, calendars, production tracking and exception management.

New Generation Computing is headquartered in Miami, Fla., and has offices in New York, Los Angeles, China, India, Mexico and El Salvador. NGC is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Software Inc., and clientele includes VF Corporation, Russell Corp., Carter’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc., Gold Toe Brands Inc, Haggar Clothing Company, Hugo Boss, Jos. A. Bank Clothiers Inc., Armani Exchange, Maidenform Inc., Wilsons Leather, Rocky Brands and Valley Apparel.