Promises made, and delivered
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 7/1/2006 12:00:00 AM
It was difficult to escape the optimism at i2's latest user conference, held in Las Vegas in May. To begin, just days earlier, longtime competitor Manugistics was finally acquired by JDA Software Group, leaving i2 as 'the last man standing'.
Michael McGrath, president and CEO, set the scene with a reminder of a commitment i2 made to its customers at last year's conference: to attain financial stability. A year on, said McGrath, i2 turned a $5-million operating loss into a $43-million operating profit, achieved earnings per share of $1.65 against $-0.36 the year before, and reduced outstanding debt from $317 million to just $25 million. The numbers aren't large, but the direction was unmistakable: Mission accomplished, in other words.
More fundamentally, the commitment to deliver on a so-called 'Next Generation' release of i2's software also been delivered. Beginning in Q3 2005 with i2 Consolidated Procurement, i2 Supplier Collaboration, and i2 Collaborative Material Management, some 12 Next Generation solution sets were delivered, with 35 live implementations to date. In addition, 450 pre-configured workflows had been defined in a Business Content Library, boosting implementation time and reducing risk. Long promised, the next generation had finally arrived, bragged McGrath.
Leaving Las Vegas, i2 users could reflect on that winning bet.
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