Red Wing Shoe Company licensed Lawson Software's Java-Based Business Intelligence suite to harness more information from its ERP applications, streamline its reporting functionality and improve the organization's overall performance. This is the first agreement, following the recent merger of Lawson and Intentia International AB, in which a former Intentia customer is implementing additional Lawson applications onto its ERP infrastructure.

"We selected Lawson's BI solution because of its rich functionality, ease-of-use, and reputation for helping its customers achieve measurable results," said Andy Anderson, IT director, Red Wing Shoe Company. "Moreover, since it is compatible with our existing M3 applications, it was more efficient to incorporate a Lawson product than investing the time and expense into a best-of-breed solution."

Red Wing plans to use Lawson's Business Intelligence suite to streamline the collection, analysis and dissemination of key performance indicators to its management team regardless of location. Automating the distribution of sales, orders and shipment information will help provide near real-time snapshot reports to business managers. The web-based reports will speed decision-making on daily and long term business performance issues, and enable the company to reduce the time, complexity and costs associated with enterprise-wide reporting. The company also plans to capitalize on the integration between the Lawson M3 Business Performance Warehouse (BPW) and Lawson M3 Portal applications to help Red Wing improve its business performance over time.

"Reports that are outdated before they are even printed hinder a company's ability to resolve business operational issues in a timely manner," said Dean Hager, senior vice president of product management, Lawson Software. "With Lawson's smart notifications and dashboard functionality, organizations can generate comprehensive reports in near real-time, facilitating the decision-making process. Our comprehensive product offering helps manufacturers maximize their business processes so they can make better business decisions and adapt quickly."

Lawson Business Intelligence provides sharply focused views of cross-functional unstructured and structured data from both Lawson and non-Lawson systems. The business intelligence and reporting tools provide relevant, accurate and timely information through role-based dashboards and also proactively "burst" monthly and quarterly reports, delivering appropriate information to the right employees with minimal administrative effort.

To facilitate this implementation, Lawson has introduced the Lawson Business Intelligence "M3 Solution Kit," which includes the BPW Runtime engine with three Business Measurement Models (sales, customers and procurement) and a Report Pack with 37 pre-built Crystal Reports. Both the Lawson S3 and Lawson M3 product lines are built on industry-standard Java-based technology and share the same Enterprise Performance Management suite.