JIWA Technology Roadmap

In 2009 JIWA released version 6.05.13, making available the following new functionality:

• Notification services - Messaging, Reminders, Automated Tasks and Automated Emailing
• Debtor Group and Inventory Group Pricing
• New Cashbook and Bank Reconciliation
• Business Intelligence (BI) powered by QlikView
• Backorder allocation priorities

This was a major release for JIWA Financials. Significant positive steps have been made in terms of stability, security, speed and functionality. Below is a quick overview of the new functionality that is now available in the full production release.

Reminders/Notifications/Note Types - JIWA To-Do's

• This new area of JIWA has added CRM like functionality to JIWA Financials.
• A To-Do may be set up for a future time to recall a task, can be set to recur, may be dependent on other tasks, collaborate with others and track the progress of the task by the administrator.
• This is a great tool for sales and operations staff to log and track all the tasks that need to be followed up.

Cash Book/Receipts/Payments/Bank Reconciliation

• A new Cash Receipts Book, Cash Payments Book and Bank Reconciliation have been implemented in order to cater for the future introduction of Foreign Exchange Banking. The Bank Reconciliation is designed in a new format that allows presented transactions to be ticked facilitating easier use and training.

Sales Orders

• To-Do's to Sales Orders have been added to Manageable Tabs as well as the ability to add Custom fields to the Sales Order Lines have also been included. Changes to Printing from Sales Orders now allow the choice of printing a document or a document type. A Search Option allows for the selection of quantity during the search. Sales Order Processing now allows for breakout customisation and automated running enabling the Sales Order system to be configured to better cope with varied sales order workflows and thereby deliver improved customer service.

Inventory

• New Debtor Group & Inventory Group Pricing that is able to be maintained from either Inventory or Debtors has been added. There is also a new Manual Backorder Fulfillment function that is useful for companies who wish to ship "nearly" complete. We have also sped up the summary display of Multi Warehouse information in the system. These two functions will increase the diversity of inventory pricing and shipping functionality that can be provided to customers.

Creditors

• This module has been completely re-developed. In doing this JIWA has re-architected their methodology for managing Unrealised Fx Gains and Losses so that it simplifies the management of this theoretical concept. The way Realised Fx Gains and Losses are calculated has also been changed by calculating and posting to the ledger during the allocation of the Creditor Payment. This keeps the General Ledger and Creditors Ledger continuously synchronised rather than waiting for a month end rollover to do this process. Any simplification along these lines is good on a "less is more" basis.

Purchasing

• Workflow options have been added to the purchasing process such that purchase orders can be controlled by multiple steps. For example, combined with the To-Do notification system, a workflow could include approval from a manager, update from an EDI system or acknowledgment from supplier of receipt of order. Multiple steps in the process are possible. This allows for faster and more managed Purchase Order placement.

Service Manager

• The ability to receive a Return Authorisation into the Service Management system has been added. This allows for the creation of an "RA" for the customer and the management of the return of the product, with workflow choices, through to the return of the goods, checking back into a "Returned Goods" warehouse and the issue of a credit note and / or the reshipping of replacement goods. There is now more control over what is happening in your returns department.

System Management

• Logical Printers

Printers are now controlled by an administrator and referenced by name from a central location to add security to printing and easier management in a Terminal Services environment.

• Security

Security has been "beefed up" to include new password encryption and lockout for report changes so that users can't replace an authorised report with an unauthorised report. Users can now change their own passwords so that they are actually private and therefore place responsibility with the use of the password with the user (together with an appropriate audit trail). There are also different credentials for client login, client operation and client printing to more tightly secure the database. More security without being intrusive in the operation of the software is a significant step forward.

• Speed of operation

"ini" files have been replaced with "xml" files, which allows for faster client loading and reduced Server Load at login. Connection to the database has also been changed to optionally use OLE-DB (ADO) vs. ODBC. To speed up printing, the printing connections are now all using ADO. The upshot is that ADO is a more efficient connection for larger systems. Faster is better than slower!

• Roles and Permissions

Version 6.5.13. has seen a complete overhaul of the security and permissions functionality. User Roles have now been implemented. Roles are established in the Role Maintenance form allowing permissions to be set at any level - from the entire form to the individual tab and sub-tab level. A Role is then attached to a user. Users can have either a single or multiple Roles attached. Where there is an over-lap in permissions, the lower level permission takes precedence. The forms are displayed in an Explorer tree format which allows them to be expanded or collapsed with ease.

JIWA EDI (J.E.D.I.)

• JIWA EDI is now fully in production. JEDI allows data from EDI Scan Packing solutions to be imported into JIWA, out of JIWA, and back into JIWAdepending on business workflows required. Furthermore, these facilities have been extended to cater for the fact that there are many permutations of business workflow requirements, and not just using EDI protocols. JEDI caters for a broad range of electronic communications now used in business to streamline the communication between customers and suppliers. JEDI has been built so that it can be configured to accommodate the changing and various requirements of JIWA users without needing to change the JIWA source code. For more information or to discuss how JEDI might work for you, please contact your JIWA Solution Provider or click here.

ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONALITY OFFERINGS - DUE DURING 2011

With the planned release of the Jiwa Financials v7.00 towards the later half of 2007; major developments will be introduced in the following areas to enhance our current range of functionality. Expect to see announcements and releases this year on:

• FOREX Bank Accounts
• FOREX Sales and Debtors
• Data compression and archiving
• JIWA Freight Management Interactive Freight (Powered by Interactive Freight Systems)
• JIWA POS (Point of Sale)

PRODUCT ENHANCEMENT REQUEST

As a new initiative for 2011 JIWA would like to invite their customers to participate in the future direction of the functionality of the product by submitting enhancement requests. If you have a specific functionality requirement that you would like JIWA to build into the product please click here and fill out the ensuring form to submit a product enhancement request. Regularly recurring product enhancement submissions will be considered by the head of development at JIWA and will be either:

• Added to the current development schedule
• Scheduled for a future version release

Please take the opportunity to submit a Product Enhancement Requests as your efforts will ultimately result in a product with enhanced functionality and relevance for the entire JIWA community.