CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

Crédit Agricole
Better advice, fewer headaches
While variety may be the spice of life, in asset management, it can be a real headache. With so many products and plans to choose from, financial advisors have discovered that recommending the right mix of investments that best serves a customer can be extremely difficult.

Crédit Agricole Asset Management (CAAM), a subsidiary of French banking leader Crédit Agricole (www.credit-agricole.fr), has reduced the risk and complexity of providing financial advice by deploying a solution using ILOG JRules and ILOG CPLEX.

Together, the ILOG products form a unique competitive differentiator for finding optimal investment combinations. ILOG JRules, a key offering in ILOG’s BRMS product line, ensures incoming market information is compliant with standards and regulations, and monitors stock values and other critical information in real time.

ILOG CPLEX is widely used in investment management to optimize asset allocation, rebalance portfolios to meet goal and risk parameters, match assets to buy orders and maximize in-kind transfers.

“ILOG JRules enables us to maintain a central reference data system whereby the information is shared across multiple applications. Furthermore, we chose JRules because its business language and ease of use in terms of managing rules make it accessible to our business users.” David Bellaïche IT project director CA Asset Management

TradeStone Software
International agility
E-sourcing has become an essential part of successful international trading -- everyone is considering it. Making it work, however, takes highly scalable software that can be quickly updated to support new offerings and market changes.

A pioneer in collaborative e-sourcing software, TradeStone Software (www.tradestonesoftware.com) is enhancing its flagship product, SteppingStones, with ILOG JRules, a key offering in ILOG’s Business Rule Management System (BRMS) product line. ILOG JRules will enable SteppingStones users in the global trade market to configure, maintain and update their business processes with greater ease.

"TradeStone selected ILOG’s BRMS due to its ability to scale, flexibility and performance, which combine to offer the greatest amount of usability for both IT and business users," says Sue Welch, president and CEO of TradeStone Software. "SteppingStones is designed to address our customers’ global e-sourcing needs. JRules’ business rule management capability will help us provide customers with a tool set for developing and deploying a trade platform that meets the demands of the global sourcing market."

E-sourcing brings trading partners together through the Web. Used by trading houses, manufacturers, suppliers and retailers the world over, it has proven benefits that include better communications, on-time service and reduced costs through competitive pricing.

SteppingStones addresses the entire e-sourcing cycle, including request for quote, order and event management, and pricing and compliance checking. As a key component of SteppingStones, ILOG JRules will capture business logic as rules that can be managed by business analysts, supply-chain planners and other business users, as well as IT personnel.

Equifax
Business users at the helm
Companies want direct access to the decision logic of their data processing applications. They know these solutions are only as good as the logic integrated with them.

Equifax’s answer: ILOG JRules. Top seller in the Business Rule Management System (BRMS) market, ILOG JRules places Equifax InterConnect users at the helm, with tools for writing and deploying business rules.

A premier information and intelligence company, Equifax, Inc., (www.equifax.com) has created a rule-based foundation for InterConnect using ILOG JRules. It gives business users the flexibility to manage application logic directly.

InterConnect is a suite of modular components that allows companies to automate crucial business processes for triggering applications, applying decisions, and obtaining and running data. ILOG JRules supports InterConnect with a centralized foundation for storing and sharing business rules, and tools for creating and modifying them to meet specific requirements.

"The high performance and scalability of ILOG JRules offer InterConnect customers the tools and resources they need for successful business rule management," says Steve Ely, senior vice president of product management at Equifax. "The combination of ILOG’s BRMS and Equifax’s analytics and decisioning expertise provides a superior solution for customers in all markets served by Equifax, including financial services, telecommunications and utilities."

Equifax chose ILOG JRules to leverage the product’s comprehensive features for significantly accelerating time to market for customers’ products and services. It is being used to extend InterConnect’s advanced decision support and analytical tools.

Hansol Paper
Paper Cuts
Planning time is critical in every industry. Faster is better, especially when better equals greater efficiency and throughput. Hansol Paper (www.hansol-paper.com), a leading papermaker in South Korea, has streamlined its processes with ILOG optimization software, improving product quality – while cutting planning time from 17 hours to just three.

"By using ILOG optimization software," says S.K. Kim, senior manager of Hansol Paper, "we are able to reduce paper waste yet still deliver the highest quality products to our customers."

In order to maximize paper production and profits, Hansol created the Hansol Integrated Production Scheduling System, basing it on a combination of three ILOG optimization products: ILOG CPLEX, ILOG Solver and ILOG Scheduler.

Along with achieving its primary goal, Hansol has improved strategic decision-making, shortened sales cycles, and reduced waste and other costs associated with the company’s operations.

Hansol is one of Asia’s leading newsprint makers, producing 1.3 million tons annually. The company sells worldwide to organizations that include newspapers in the United States.

Amper Sistemas
Spain’s homeland security sees all
Only through constant surveillance can a country safeguard its borders, and only the most reliable and accurate visualization software can be entrusted with such an important task.

This is why Amper Sistemas (www.amper.es), part of the Amper Spanish Telecommunications Group and a leading system integrator, has included ILOG visualization software in an early warning system for spotting illegal activities and security threats along Spain’s southern coast.

Deployed by the Guardia Civil, Spain’s homeland security agency, the surveillance system is aimed primarily at stemming the tide of illegal maritime embarkations. Special emphasis is placed on early warning, as the agency tries to capture people in the act.

"Among various key elements of this critical system are its intuitive user displays provided by ILOG," says Matias Anegón, managing director of Amper Sistemas, "which enable users of the system to interactively monitor the area under surveillance, make decisions and take action faster."

The system uses ILOG Views and ILOG Server in real-time graphical displays that give operators the speed and detail to detect, pinpoint and monitor illegal activities such as drug trafficking and unauthorized immigration. ILOG Views is used in the interfaces for monitoring these activities, while ILOG Server processes and synchronizes data from sensors located on the ground and in aircraft, boats and satellites.