i2 Technologies Inc is to expand its supply chain management applications towards sales and marketing, customer service, workforce planning and financial planning, the company announced at a trade show in Dallas, Texas this week. The move is in response to SAP AG’s aggressive move into i2’s own supply chain space (CI No 3,496). At the event, i2 launched its e-Business Process Optimization extension for the customer-to-supplier process to its Rhythm product suite. It integrates sales configuration and fulfillment across both the selling and supply chains. i2 promises further e-BPO extensions in the near future, so that it covers all six core business processes. The company isn’t planning to compete head on with ERP vendors, but wants to extend supply chain planning to integrate with data from ERP and other sources. i2 also announced general availability of a 64-bit version of Rhythm for Hewlett-Packed Co’s HP-UX 11 Unix operating system. I2, which had sales of $200m in 1997, is forecast to reach $350m in revenues this year. It has distribution deals in place with Oracle Corp and – currently at least – with SAP.
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