EXTOL International today announced that it has integrated its B2B integration platform with business partner S4i Systems' electronic document management (EDM) software designed for IBM Power Systems customers. The joint solution of EXTOL Business Integrator (EBI) combined with S4i Express will offer a seamless integration of event-driven real-time communications between companies using EXTOL’s EDI system and a S4i complete document delivery system that electronically captures, separates, indexes, bundles, and delivers or archives documents and reports, the companies said. With this integration, S4i and EXTOL will optimize supply chain communications, become more responsive to business needs, and adjust to industry changes, the companies said.

EXTOL is the first B2B integration solution provider to provide design-time tools that automate the most time-consuming and expensive activities in the B2B integration lifecycle: automated metadata capture and management with 95 percent time savings; automated mapping (Smart Mapping) with over 70 percent time savings; automated creation of EDI partner endpoints by generating them from sample partner interchange data, saving up to 90 percent of the time needed for manual configuration, and more.

S4i Express, is a document management solution that aids in the management of EDI-based transactions that support the movement of goods from manufacturers, suppliers and distributors; providing updates, reports and managing documents such as load tenders, package order status, shipping notices, proofs of delivery and receipts. The vast output format options include: PDF, HTML, Excel, Word, and more. These documents can instantly be delivered to management, vendors, dealers, customers and others.

"Our overall goal with this integration is to deliver value to our respective customers," said Spencer Elliott, president S4i Systems. "One of the key value propositions we provide is a secure, reliable, and auditable solution for supporting the EDI process by automatically distributing, archiving, and retrieving documents arising from an EDI transaction." S4i Express provides the content management platform that works with EXTOL’s B2B integration platform on-demand.

"Business partnerships have evolved over the past several years," said Daniel Sapir, vice president, EXTOL. "Today they require that software vendors collaborate and deliver real value to customers. Our automated B2B integration platform complements S4i content management environment and improves the rapid development and predictability of integration projects, and the efficient delivery of reports and documents in a variety of formats, resulting in savings in time and costs. EBI was designed to replace–and bridge the gaps between–conventional EDI translators, data integration tools, business process automation tools, web services toolkits, XML transformations tools kits and spreadsheet integrators.

About S4i Systems

S4i provides electronic document management and disk management solutions for IBM Power Systems System i. With a strong commitment to continuously delivering trusted value, S4i's customer and service driven team provides project design, management and implementation services to ensure a successful software deployment.

S4i Express is a fully integrated System i automated report distribution and electronic document management (EDM) system that can automate all document processing enterprise wide. IT leaders use S4i Express to improve internal and external business communications. Because of its scalability, completeness and cost/value benefit, S4i Express is the preferred System i EDM offering.