Ciba Crop Protection And Olin Chemical Manage SAP R 3 Interfaces With Universal Portable Interface (UPI) From Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group ICS; Major Sales Wins Add To Portfolio of 40+ Companies Worldwide to Select UPI for Building and Managing R 3 Interfaces.

CHADDS FORD, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 27, 1996--ICS, a subsidiary of Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group, today announced that Ciba Crop Protection and Olin Chemical have successfully implemented ICS's industry leading Universal Portable Interface (UPI) for building and managing their SAP R/3 interfaces. Available since October 1994, more than 40 companies worldwide, including Bell Canada and Microsoft Corporation have selected UPI.

UPI provides a total framework for R/3 interface management, including construction, control, execution and monitoring of inbound and outbound data transfer. UPI inbound supports interfaces that load data from legacy systems or from external SAP systems into R/3. UPI outbound supports interfaces extracting data from SAP R/3 for legacy systems.

"Data being extracted by UPI is event driven and occurs realtime," said Joshua Kelsey, product manager for UPI at ICS. "UPI captures data as it is posted making it very efficient and cost effective; unlike other products which use time consuming and costly query techniques to strip appropriate data from large databases."

"UPI is more than just a code generation tool for data migration," said Mark Abbott, MIS manager at Olin-Winchester. "It manages two-way communication of data being passed to and from standard R/3 transactions."

"With UPI, we have built and are managing 50 interfaces to R/3," said Tony Smith, CPIR project manager at Ciba Crop Protection, a division of Ciba Geigy located in Greensboro, North Carolina. "By using this product, we were able to save invaluable time building interfaces and concentrate on other areas of the implementation."

With UPI, companies implementing R/3 realize significant benefits:

o Automation of tasks for faster interface building

o Simplified interface maintenance and support

o Identification of exact interface specifications for ABAP 

program generation with built in audit trails and error checks

o Consistency in framework for building and maintaining

interfaces

o Customization of required interfaces

As an administrative support tool, UPI protects the integrity of data and lets users know when problems occur through an audit trail of interface activity and a single repository for problem resolution. In addition, UPI can serve as a data replicator within the R/3 environment when the inbound and outbound components are used in tandem, linked together by the UPI realtime communications facility. "ICS provided us with SAP implementation expertise, as well as the tools necessary to make the implementation faster and smoother," said Ron Bruner, SAP project manager at Olin-Winchester. "We were able to meet implementation deadlines by saving significant time in mapping-out a methodology for building and maintaining interfaces."

Pricing And Availability

Available since October 1994, UPI is the leading interface management system for R/3 implementations. Its current version 2.3 was released October 1995. Pricing for UPI starts at $75,000.00.

About Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group/ICS

ICS was founded in 1990 by SAP professionals to provide rapid SAP implementation services for companies around the world; the firm was acquired by Deloitte & Touche in March 1995. A Global Logo Partner for SAP R/3, ICS has won SAP's Award of Excellence since its inception. The unique combination of deep SAP expertise and business experience offers clients a full spectrum of services that can be scaled to fit any project, regardless of scope or size. The firm delivers SAP software implementation with business process reengineering (BPR), complementary software products, education and training, and change management. More than 1,300 ICS professionals serve more than 100 customers worldwide. Headquartered in Chadds Ford, PA, the firm has over 22 offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and South Africa.

Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group, one of the world's leading consulting services practices with over $ 1 billion in global consulting revenues, provides an array of services to industries including: manufacturing, healthcare, financial institutions, retail consumer intensive business, telecommunications, utilities and public sector. Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group is a division of Deloitte & Touche LLP, one of the nations leading providers of accounting, auditing, and tax services. Deloitte & Touche is part of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu International, a global provider of professional services.

Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group partners with clients to create change that produces results. -0-

SAP is a registered trademark of SAP Aktiengesellschaft, Walldorf. Universal Portable Interface (UPI) is a registered trademark of ICS.

CONTACT: Marikit Klein Smith, [e-mail]

Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group/ICS

[phone]

or

Sarah Sherman, [e-mail]

NEVA Group, Inc. [phone] ext. 226