WRQ integration solution enables workflow at UFJ Finance Australia Limited
Announcement posted by WRQ Software 06 Jul 2002
UFJ Australia Finance Limited (UFJ Finance) is one of the leading specialist equipment financiers in Australia. For a wide range of small and medium-sized business in the industrial, government, commercial, rural and professional sectors, Lease and Hire Purchase financing continue to be an attractive alternative form of funding the acquisition of income-producing items such as plant, equipment and vehicles. Equipment that UFJ Finance finances includes computers and software leasing, hi-tech medical equipment, cars, transportation equipment, agricultural equipment etc. UFJ Finance is a subsidiary of the UFJ Bank of Japan, one of the leading banks of the world.
UFJ Business Reform
In 2001 UFJ Finance began a process of business reform. The goal of the business reform was to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of UFJ Finance business processes to provide greater profitability and customer satisfaction, through the improved handling of all transactions. Planning for this reform required UFJ Finance to focus on the technologies that underpinned these business processes.
Workflow was chosen by UFJ Finance as the strategic enabling technology for business reform. The implementation of workflow mandated integration with the company's mission-critical InfoLease application. The InfoLease architecture required an innovative approach to integration legacy extension middleware would be required. WRQ's Verastream Host Integrator provided the key.
UFJ Finance determined that while InfoLease continued to provide a functionally rich core business application, to gain the planned improvements to their business efficiency and effectiveness, adoption of new technologies would be required.
UFJ Finance understood that new technologies employed would need to:
Provide the flexibility to take advantage of future enhancements to InfoLease, and
Aid the adoption of emerging technologies that would enhance UFJ Finances business, such as the introduction of web-delivered services to customers.
In search for a host integration solution
At the beginning of 2001, UFJ Finance chose K-Flow from Power Plus Pty. Ltd, a workflow system that electronically automates, tracks and audits business-critical work processes across an enterprise.
Chris Nilon, General manager of Information Technology at UFJ Finance: "While we were evaluating a workflow package we were faced with the problem of how to integrate InfoLease. International Decision Systems had some modules available but these did not support all of the functionality that we required. We realized that we had to search for an alternative solution to integrate our legacy host applications with K-Flow."
The evaluation commenced with an Internet search of vendors claiming to provide UI extension / host integration applications. UFJ Finance evaluated the offerings from eight vendors. The challenge for UFJ Finance was that many vendors did not support the integration of legacy applications on the UNIX platform.
The integration of UNIX applications is less likely to be supported than the integration of IBM Mainframe and/or IBM AS/400 applications that use block mode emulation. As a result many of the host integration vendors that UFJ Finance identified, only supported the 'easy' block mode integration rather than the more difficult to integrate UNIX character based applications.
Chris Nilon: "VT is extremely difficult to do, more difficult than 3270. While some vendors claimed they did VT emulation, the reality was that many offered 3270 or 5250 solutions only. WRQ was very responsive and offered a Proof-of-Concept (POC), which we accepted. The POC was carried out on our site using their Verastream Host Integrator (VHI) legacy adapter with our system. The successful demonstration of VT emulation proved to us that the technology was viable. We saw that not only did VHI have the capability to integrate our VT application; WRQ demonstrated their ability to support our specific needs. We were convinced that VHI was the right solution for us
WRQ Verastream Host Integrator
WRQ's Verastream Host Integrator is cost-effective software for extracting legacy information and integrating it with other applications like web applications or as in UFJ Finance's case a Workflow application. Verastream Host Integrator offers object-based access (Microsoft COM, Java EJB or CORBA) to business logic and data, and requires no custom programming or re-engineering of legacy host applications. The fact that Verastream Host Integrator is non-invasive to the host, meant that UFJ Finance were able to integrate their InfoLease application without compromising the robustness, security, stability and integrity of UFJ Finance's legacy systems.
In addition to the Verastream product WRQ also offered UFJ Finance consultancy help. WRQ's consulting staff worked as a team with UFJ Finance's Application development group and the K-Flow people.
Nilon: "This was a true team approach. We were very happy with the commitment to the project and the support received from WRQ.
Nilon liked the flexibility and performance of Verastream Host Integrator. "The fact that Verastream offers an attractive architecture by delivering an API that can be Java or COM gives us a lot of flexibility for the future. Verastream Host Integrator simply works. There is no performance overhead with Verastream compared to going directly to the Host. It is a great product with great potential."
Solving the business problems
With the Workflow solution in place UFJ Finance has streamlined its equipment leasing process, resulting in improved transaction times and more efficient customer service processes. The results according to Nilon: "Thanks to the Workflow implementation in combination with Verastream Host Integrator with InfoLease, we can now handle increased transaction volumes with the same headcount. In addition to this Verastream Host Integrator has improved the customer service process by providing a graphical user interface (GUI) to our InfoLease application.
Future plans
UFJ Finance is well positioned to explore the use of emerging technologies for their business. Nilon: "We were already able to expand our business using emerging technologies. But with the open architecture in place today, we can focus more on e-Commerce initiatives, something that has been difficult in the past. Furthermore we can expand the access to our workflow application to our trading partners".
About WRQ
WRQ provides integration software and services for host-intensive environments. For 21 years, weve been helping our customers access and integrate information to transform the way they do business. With more than 26,000 customers representing eight million users worldwide, we are one of the top software companies in the U.S. We sell our award-winning Reflection and Verastream products directly and through a global network of business partners.
###
WRQ, Inc. and WRQ products are trademarks or registered trademarks of WRQ Inc. All other trademarks, trade names or company names referenced herein are used for identification only and are the property of their respective owners.
UFJ Business Reform
In 2001 UFJ Finance began a process of business reform. The goal of the business reform was to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of UFJ Finance business processes to provide greater profitability and customer satisfaction, through the improved handling of all transactions. Planning for this reform required UFJ Finance to focus on the technologies that underpinned these business processes.
Workflow was chosen by UFJ Finance as the strategic enabling technology for business reform. The implementation of workflow mandated integration with the company's mission-critical InfoLease application. The InfoLease architecture required an innovative approach to integration legacy extension middleware would be required. WRQ's Verastream Host Integrator provided the key.
UFJ Finance determined that while InfoLease continued to provide a functionally rich core business application, to gain the planned improvements to their business efficiency and effectiveness, adoption of new technologies would be required.
UFJ Finance understood that new technologies employed would need to:
Provide the flexibility to take advantage of future enhancements to InfoLease, and
Aid the adoption of emerging technologies that would enhance UFJ Finances business, such as the introduction of web-delivered services to customers.
In search for a host integration solution
At the beginning of 2001, UFJ Finance chose K-Flow from Power Plus Pty. Ltd, a workflow system that electronically automates, tracks and audits business-critical work processes across an enterprise.
Chris Nilon, General manager of Information Technology at UFJ Finance: "While we were evaluating a workflow package we were faced with the problem of how to integrate InfoLease. International Decision Systems had some modules available but these did not support all of the functionality that we required. We realized that we had to search for an alternative solution to integrate our legacy host applications with K-Flow."
The evaluation commenced with an Internet search of vendors claiming to provide UI extension / host integration applications. UFJ Finance evaluated the offerings from eight vendors. The challenge for UFJ Finance was that many vendors did not support the integration of legacy applications on the UNIX platform.
The integration of UNIX applications is less likely to be supported than the integration of IBM Mainframe and/or IBM AS/400 applications that use block mode emulation. As a result many of the host integration vendors that UFJ Finance identified, only supported the 'easy' block mode integration rather than the more difficult to integrate UNIX character based applications.
Chris Nilon: "VT is extremely difficult to do, more difficult than 3270. While some vendors claimed they did VT emulation, the reality was that many offered 3270 or 5250 solutions only. WRQ was very responsive and offered a Proof-of-Concept (POC), which we accepted. The POC was carried out on our site using their Verastream Host Integrator (VHI) legacy adapter with our system. The successful demonstration of VT emulation proved to us that the technology was viable. We saw that not only did VHI have the capability to integrate our VT application; WRQ demonstrated their ability to support our specific needs. We were convinced that VHI was the right solution for us
WRQ Verastream Host Integrator
WRQ's Verastream Host Integrator is cost-effective software for extracting legacy information and integrating it with other applications like web applications or as in UFJ Finance's case a Workflow application. Verastream Host Integrator offers object-based access (Microsoft COM, Java EJB or CORBA) to business logic and data, and requires no custom programming or re-engineering of legacy host applications. The fact that Verastream Host Integrator is non-invasive to the host, meant that UFJ Finance were able to integrate their InfoLease application without compromising the robustness, security, stability and integrity of UFJ Finance's legacy systems.
In addition to the Verastream product WRQ also offered UFJ Finance consultancy help. WRQ's consulting staff worked as a team with UFJ Finance's Application development group and the K-Flow people.
Nilon: "This was a true team approach. We were very happy with the commitment to the project and the support received from WRQ.
Nilon liked the flexibility and performance of Verastream Host Integrator. "The fact that Verastream offers an attractive architecture by delivering an API that can be Java or COM gives us a lot of flexibility for the future. Verastream Host Integrator simply works. There is no performance overhead with Verastream compared to going directly to the Host. It is a great product with great potential."
Solving the business problems
With the Workflow solution in place UFJ Finance has streamlined its equipment leasing process, resulting in improved transaction times and more efficient customer service processes. The results according to Nilon: "Thanks to the Workflow implementation in combination with Verastream Host Integrator with InfoLease, we can now handle increased transaction volumes with the same headcount. In addition to this Verastream Host Integrator has improved the customer service process by providing a graphical user interface (GUI) to our InfoLease application.
Future plans
UFJ Finance is well positioned to explore the use of emerging technologies for their business. Nilon: "We were already able to expand our business using emerging technologies. But with the open architecture in place today, we can focus more on e-Commerce initiatives, something that has been difficult in the past. Furthermore we can expand the access to our workflow application to our trading partners".
About WRQ
WRQ provides integration software and services for host-intensive environments. For 21 years, weve been helping our customers access and integrate information to transform the way they do business. With more than 26,000 customers representing eight million users worldwide, we are one of the top software companies in the U.S. We sell our award-winning Reflection and Verastream products directly and through a global network of business partners.
###
WRQ, Inc. and WRQ products are trademarks or registered trademarks of WRQ Inc. All other trademarks, trade names or company names referenced herein are used for identification only and are the property of their respective owners.