[London, ENGLAND] Norwegian metal supplier Elkem is about to
embark on the largest e-business project ever undertaken in
Norway, in cooperation with Swedish solutions company
Intentia International AB, the two firms announced Friday.
Espen Falla, IT Director at Elkem, said the board had taken
the position of investing NOK 100 million (US $11 million)
in the coming year alone.
As one of Norway’s largest industry groups, Elkem is a
key supplier of raw materials to the steel, chemical,
electronic and aluminum industries. Its annual turnover
is over NOK 10 billion (US $1,123 million), a figure
that tends to put the amount allocated to e-business in
perspective.
Intentia will supply its Java-based Movex platform which it has
developed as a complete e-collaboration solution intended
to manage all the demands of the new economy. Among its
applications are customer relationship management (CRM),
enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain planning
& execution (SCPE), partner relationship management (PRM),
business performance management (BPM) and e-business.
Intentia’s agreement with Elkem is initially for 12
months and consists of both software licenses and
consultancy. Intentia will derive NOK 40 million
(US $4.5 million) in license revenue and NOK 60 million
(US $6.5 million) in consulting revenue from the deal.
“Selecting Movex as the platform for our business-critical
processes means that we are now going to simplify our
IT infrastructure, thereby creating a more effective
organization,” commented Falla.
In terms of employee numbers, Intentia is not much
smaller than Elkem. It employs more than 3,800 people
in comparison to Elkem’s 4,100 employees. The
difference is that they are spread around the world,
serving 3,500 customers in over 40 countries.
Intentia’s work with a key supplier of metals and
materials will not only boost its balance sheet
significantly, but will also bring it into close contact
with related industries.
The deal is a big boost for the Java version of
Movex. Elkem plans to run the system in a Unix environment
on Sun Solaris systems, helped by 30 consultants
from Intentia.
