FlexNet is a new type of enterprise software

About FlexNet

FlexNet® is a new type of enterprise software that is focused entirely on an enterprise's global supply, production, and distribution execution processes. It compliments your ERP and CRM software investments and provides a real-time, event-driven model that can be used to institutionalize strategic business initiatives such as "lean supply", six-sigma quality programs, portable or re-usable processes, and demand pull, as well as provide for "relentless efficiency" in all of your operations, around the word.

The FlexNet Advantage:
A Total Enterprise Solution for Operations Execution

FlexNet's dynamic, 100 percent Web-services-based suite of applications provides you with a total, end-to-end operational execution solution that interlinks all of the elements in your extended "value chain", including your people, material, machines and processes - and those of your suppliers - and provides for the transfer of real-time data, signals, key performance indicators, or business intelligence form any location to any other location in the word for any operational purpose.

Key Capabilities and Benefits
Institutionalize Best Practices

FlexNet is the first commercially-available enterprise application software that provides the means for companies in virtually any industry to implement strategic initiatives such as their own version of the now-famous "Dell" business model. It also enables supply and operating executives to attain real-time, fine-grained control of their people, processes, material and machines with a Web-based, distributed software architecture that is global in its reach, and scales without limit. It is the first software that offers a rapidly-deployed and turnkey means for instituting crucial strategic business initiatives such as lean supply, pull, six-sigma quality, adaptable business processes, compliance, and global tracking of material and resources, including RFID.

Event-driven Architecture

FlexNet has been built from the ground up to utilize a Web-services, distributed architecture, and represents the most comprehensive implementation of any Web-services application to date. This architecture permits word-wide, instantaneous communication between any and all of an enterprise's production, supply and distribution processes, from the most atomic level to the most abstract, and thus enables the world's first truly event-driven enterprise software implementation.

The implementation of an event-driven architecture is that the software can be used to immediately implement dynamic, adaptive, pull-based supply models, such as the Toyota Production System, or the celebrated Dell Computer business model, as well produce all data necessary for the most stringent reporting and compliance requirements. Moreover, the simplicity of describing, reusing, and transporting processes makes successive-improvement strategies (kaizen), or dynamic, adaptive business processes, practicable, perhaps for the first time in an organization. Finally, the comprehensive support throughout the FlexNet suite for monitoring and reacting to quality events makes the suite unsurpassed for true six-sigma, lean supply implementation and administration.

Global Process Standardization

FlexNet allows companies to rapidly and easily configure and global deploy standard, reusable execution processes that are continually monitored and perfected through one or more Centers of Operational Excellence (COEs). COEs are like mission control centers for business, and can be configured anywhere, to be used by most appropriate personnel. FlexNet innately understands over 40 types of operational processes and can easily be configured for an infinity of others, by the very persons responsible for the design or use of those processes.

Fine-grained Operational Control

FlexNet allows companies to attain fine-grained control of their activities with its built-in "Real-time Performance Dashboard" - the world's first solution for business metrics that delivers key performance indicators in real time, rather that after daily or weekly closes to distributed Metric Panels. Through the medium of the Metric Panels, any part of the enterprise's workforce can be alerted immediately when the performance of any monitored process is out of tolerance. KPIs can be generated and/or reported to any business level, form individual machine components to work centers, suppliers, departments, plants, enterprises, or even entire trading groups, and are derived form FlexNet's underlying database of over 21,000 different, built-in data elements. The Metric Panels can be deployed in COEs, or right on the floor where they are needed.

Maximum Productivity through Employee Empowerment

Your investment in FlexNet solutions will yield major cost savings and productivity grains by empowering the work force at all levels in an enterprise to eliminate waste, remove non-value-add activities, and correct problems on the spot before they escalate into costly, wasteful defects. FlexNet makes possible unprecedented levels of productivity by linking employees on the ground directly to strategic plans, processes and systems of companies and value networks, resulting in breakthrough cost containment. FlexNet unleashes the value left untapped by your enterprise planning and control systems, as well as your disparate point solutions for manufacturing execution, quality control, maintenance and logistics, by bridging the gaps between these systems.

Accelerated Results through a Quicker Business Pace

Real-time collaboration means working seamlessly within and between organizations, customers, suppliers, and partners to monitor, act on, and measure all business activities. FlexNet allows you to do business in real-time by combining data accuracy and timeliness with the speed, reach and economy of the Internet. The FlexNet global database structure and business process architecture uniquely integrates and synchronizes all your resources for optimal results. FlexNet ensures that the right people make the right decisions at the right time.

Maximum Customer Satisfaction

Using FlexNet, leading companies exceed their customers' expectations where it matters the most. By focusing on operational excellence, companies report near 100 percent shipping accuracy, high quality and on-time delivery. High customer satisfaction means faster order-to-cash cycle times, fewer return and greater customer loyalty - hallmarks of successful businesses that know how to execute with precision. FlexNet enables customer-focused execution by synchronizing people, processes, machines and systems around the strategies developed to address customer's needs.

Increase Effectiveness with a Lower Capital Investment

Disparate point solutions are capable of automating just one area within a single facility, cheaply and quickly, but integrating them all is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. FlexNet is the only solution available that integrates the operations of the entire business and supports collaboration across trading partners. High value does not have to mean high risk. FlexNet is built on the latest Web-services technology, so it integrates with existing systems easily, without straining your IT resources and budgets.

In addition, FlexNet can be implemented in a systematic, step-by-step fashion. Enterprises can concentrate first on processes with the highest leverage or in support of their strategic initiatives, and then grow the system as required. Unlike classical enterprise software, FlexNet achieves nearly immediate and compounding ROIs, wherever it is deployed.