By George, This Printer's Got It; Core Helps Firm Deploy Oracle Applications.

BRISBANE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 8, 1999--When it came to selecting a new computer system, George Lithograph Inc., a printing company with 300 employees and annual revenue of $42 million, had to fit a square peg in a round hole.

The Brisbane company does more than simply print documents, it packages them for immediate placement on store shelves, so a turnkey print package would not meet its needs. The company thought a general-purpose finance and manufacturing system would not offer sufficient printing functionality.

Working with Core Technology Group, a California-based systems integrator, the printing company found a middle ground. In early 1998, George determined that the print packages were not a viable option. Not only did they lack fulfillment features; they also were unable to support Web-based transactions. Increasingly, customers wanted to dial into the firm's Web site and examine the status of their current print jobs rather than call George personnel for that information.

After examining top Enterprise Resource Planning systems, the printing company determined that Oracle's financial and manufacturing applications were the best fit. The products featured robust Web connectivity and flexibility in its manufacturing modules.

Aggressive plans to install the new applications were made. The existing system, a turnkey application from a printing software supplier that runs on a proprietary Unix computer, was not Y2K compliant. In May 1998, the printing company started to outline the migration from its existing system to the new one, which runs on a server from Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, Calif.

Core personnel specializing in the Oracle products helped the printing firm examine its business processes, determine their efficiency, and then map daily business functions to the new system. A significant challenge was insuring the new system included little customization: George did not want to be tuning such features each time Oracle delivered a new release of its software. By following Core's methodology, the printing company limited custom enhancements to less than five percent of the final code.

With the development work completed, the printing company needed to test the new system. That step, which took place at the end of 1998, consisted of first working with individual modules, next tying them together, and last simulating a production run. Most organizations put a new daily business system in place slowly, moving one module into production at a time. Because its business applications were so tightly integrated, George Lithograph did not have that option. The new system was cut over during the weekend of Feb. 27 and 28. Core personnel were on site the entire time to insure the system would be operating smoothly on Monday morning.

Established in 1985, Core Technology Group specializes in bringing modern business systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Operations Resource Planning Systems, and E-Commerce Systems to major companies with both local and global operations. Core has recently performed implementations at companies such as Plantronics, Specialized Bike, Onsale, VISA, Aurora Biosciences, Cisco Systems and Novell. Core's dedicated team of professionals has compiled a superior track record of quality service, timely responsiveness and teamwork for hundreds of customers.

For further information about Core Technology Group, please visit the Web site at www.coretec.com or call 888/999-CORE.