UK Rail Giant Chooses Jade For Online Ordering

PRESS RELEASE

UK Rail Giant Chooses Jade For Online Ordering System

Christchurch, 29 June 2001. - A JADE-built electronic customer ordering system is the latest tool in rail freight giant EWS’ campaign to transform the way electricity supply industry customers can order rail freight services in the UK.

English, Welsh & Scottish Railways (EWS), the United Kingdom’s largest rail freight company, has recently installed the JADE Electronic Customer Ordering System (ECOS) to streamline the business process of ordering, planning and monitoring trains carrying coal from coal suppliers to power stations.

Allen Johnson, EWS Chief Operating Officer, says: “Online ordering for customers of rail freight has become the norm in America. Britain needed the same level of online customer responsiveness and direct confirmation of business requests.”

The system collects orders into one central database, which enables EWS to know, at a glance, what trains have been allocated to satisfy customer requirements.

EWS customers such as AES, British Energy, Edison, Enron, Innogy, Powergen, Scottish Power and TXU can access the system over the Internet to place orders for coal and then track, in real time, the progress of their deliveries, as can the 33 companies supplying the coal from 96 collieries.

Global Positioning System (GPS) technology within EWS’ locomotive fleet gives customers the ability to track the position of their trains more accurately than they ever have in the past.

Says Mr Johnson, “I am delighted that EWS has implemented the first rail freight on-line ordering service for coal. This is the way forward for purchasing rail freight services and its development by EWS will lead to growth in the amount of rail freight hauled on Britain’s rail network.”

Work has already commenced on developing the system further to include other commodities such as metals, aggregates and cement.

JADE’s Executive Director, Mike White, believes ECOS stands testimony to what can be achieved by a small, dedicated team using JADE to build a complex system in an extremely short timeframe. The ECOS system went live after only 5 months of development. Comparable systems have been known to take up to 18 months.

“Given the time constraints and nature of the requirements, JADE was the most effective technology to deliver the solution.

“Instead of having to rely on multiple sources of information compiled by numerous people, EWS now has all information centralised and integrated into one database. That’s meant improvements all down the line; everyone from the coal supplier, to the power generator, to EWS itself, is benefiting.

“And this is only the beginning. This online ordering system has great scope and potential."

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CONTACTS

Graham Meiklejohn, EWS Public Affairs Manager, tel. +44 7801 905363, mobile: +44 020 7713 2486, graham.meiklejohn@ews-railway.co.uk

Leigh Gray, JADE, tel 03 365 2500, lgray@jade.co.nz

ABOUT EWS

English Welsh & Scottish Railway (EWS), Britain’s largest rail freight operator based in Doncaster, England, moves over 100 million tonnes of freight each year and runs over 7000 trains each week. EWS trains run from Cornwall to the northernmost tip of Scotland and most places in between, providing services that cover everything from heavy industry to high-speed logistics.

ABOUT JADE

JADE is an international software company based in Christchurch, New Zealand. JADE produces a software development suite of the same name. This suite has everything an organisation needs to build and run enterprise systems for electronic commerce.

JADE is a division of Aoraki Corporation Limited, a privately owned New Zealand company. It employs 400 people in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. The company's founder and Chief Executive is Sir Gil Simpson.

More than 70 JADE Partners, including companies such as IBM, Ernst & Young, KPMG, Hitachi Data Systems, gen-i, and Mi Services Group use JADE in their product or service offering. JADE is used in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Korea, India and the United Kingdom.

For more information visit www.discoverjade.com

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