Retail Chain Etam Selects Cordys for Optimizing IT and Business Processes.

ZOETERMEER, The Netherlands -- Proof of Concept with Cordys Platform Shows Significant Improvements in Business Integration, Speed and Costs of New IT Systems

Etam Group, a privately held Dutch based women apparel clothing retail business with 185 stores, has selected Cordys to optimize its business processes and efficiently help further expand the organization. An initial project showed Etam three main benefits of choosing for Cordys software to integrate existing applications, rather than replacing them by a single integrated ERP system: optimizing of the business processes, expected savings in IT maintenance costs, and reducing the time to market - with less effort and cost.

Etam is maneuvering in a dynamic market and challenged itself to improve the responsiveness of their IT systems towards the ever emerging business requirements. That is why Etam chose a best-of-breed approach involving Cordys, rather than a single integrated ERP system. The choice was based on an initial proof of concept with Cordys, which resulted in over 30% improvement in both Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and in the time needed to make new IT functionality fully supportive to the business goals.

Guus Brinkel, CIO at Etam Group: "Our IT landscape covers 10 mission critical applications and 16 less critical applications company-wide. They include shop automation, logistics, merchandise management, real estate management, MIS, HR and Admin. We were particularly interested in decreasing the costs of maintenance, as well as in improving our time to market with new IT projects. The assignment we gave to Cordys, was to take us through the IT implications of the process of opening a new outlet, within three months - from scratch. That included establishing connectivity to three enterprise applications, a master database and reporting functionality."

Brinkel continues: "Cordys showed us how to use their platform to move away from a more diffuse process -with different roles and multiple data entry requirements- towards a clear process and roles, providing one single data entry through a portal, with automatic synchronization with the underlying systems. Etam also decided to standardize its data architecture using the retail industry data standard ARTS. With the help of the Cordys platform this model could easily be integrated into the whole system."

Henk de Ruiter, Executive Vice President at Cordys: "The Cordys platform, which is considered the most comprehensive Composite Application Framework commercially available, helped us design the necessary business processes and establish and manage solid integration between the processes and applications by means of our Enterprise Service Bus. This ESB dramatically reduces the complexity and cost of integration projects, and provides a solid foundation on which it is easy to develop and deploy new event- and process-driven applications."

Etam experienced that the development of new functionality was done over 30% faster as well as cheaper. Data entry now happened through one single point of entry and the Cordys platform distributed it seamlessly over different systems. The process owners were provided with clear status overviews including key performance indicators. And transactions that were handled manually before, now were executed and managed by the Cordys platform, improving speed and establishing reduction of mistakes.

This all resulted into a process rather than application driven way of working-including an automated workflow-, in increased flexibility and reliable management information, and in less time and costs for IT maintenance. Together Etam and Cordys have continued further execution of business issues, following a strict calendar.

Guus Brinkel, Etam Group: "Cordys will provide us with the cement between our core applications, without us having to replace them. We can apply changes step by step, in the company's own pace. Next to that, from an IT department point of view we've seen that it will be cheaper, easier and faster to facilitate the Etam organization with new IT functionality, supporting the company in achieving its corporate goals."

Notes to editors

About Etam Group

The Etam Group (www.etamgroep.nl) is a successful private company, established in The Netherlands with its headquarters and distribution centre in Zoetermeer. The Etam Group BV operates two retail formats, Miss Etam and Promiss, and one service company. The targets of both formulas of the group are women of 25-45 years, with middle income. Quick response towards fashion trends are the key to its success. The Etam Group in total has 185 stores and 2400 employees. Its distribution centre of 400,000 square feet is considered to be one of the most advanced in Europe.

About Cordys

Cordys (www.cordys.com) helps companies to create more efficient and collaborative business environments by enabling IT systems to be integrated with new business processes, using Web-services. Cordys uses an event-driven ESB to simplify IT structure while providing an integrated platform within which new functionality can be readily created and deployed. This enables IT systems to rapidly respond to changes in business processes and to new business initiatives. Cordys makes existing IT systems future-proof, at acceptable costs and at a company's own pace.

Cordys is a global software company headquartered in Putten, the Netherlands, which employs over 575 people in offices across the Americas, Europe, China and India.