Riyadh, Saudi Arabia 30 September 2003. Jarir Bookstore, the Middle East's most successful retailer and wholesaler of Office Supplies, Books and IT Products, has just finished a pioneering implementation of Web services technologies based on IBM's WebSphere platform.   The new systems bring together Jarir's resource planning systems with Web services and business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce systems to allow it dramatically increase the speed and efficiency with which it works with its suppliers.

Jarir is one of the most successful book super-stores in the region, with more than 15 branches in Saudi Arabia and the lower Gulf.  It has an extensive network of suppliers, as well as a host of large business customers. To ensure that stock supplies were always kept at optimum levels, and to create a highly efficient supply chain to reduce costs and inventory, Jarir needed a sophisticated Web-enabled supply chain management solution that would allow it to work with its suppliers efficiently. After studying various offerings on the market, it chose IBM's WebSphere Commerce Suite.

"Our business model is based on efficiency: keeping margins as low as possible to give our customers the best prices through maximising business and supply chain efficiencies. To be able to juggle the needs of our large corporate customers with stock requirements in our many retail stores requires very careful planning. We wanted a highly robust, ultra-reliable commerce system that would be able to handle the complexity of the modern retail operation, but give us flexibility to change or add to it as our needs changed," said Abdullah?Al-Mosa, IT Vice President at Jarir Book Store.

Information technology has played a major part in Jarir's success and market leadership. Jarir's management?was the one of the first to use ERP systems in early '90s (JDE on the IBM AS/400 platform), and one of the earliest users of modern, computerised Point Of Sale systems in the Kingdom in their showrooms (IBM RA/Dos with 4694 IBM POS).

"The IBM WebSphere solution that we developed with Jarir is a perfect match for their requirements," said Bashar Baidas, SBM Client Manager, Central Region. "WebSphere runs on almost any popular platform, whether its Windows-based, UNIX/Linux-based or IBM's iSeries. It is also designed with an open-standards architecture, giving Jarir the freedom to integrate it with a host of other applications and technologies, whether accounting, business planning or Web."

The new e-commerce system is based on WebSphere running on an IBM iSeries midrange server. Jarir is using IBM's MQ Series transaction processing technology internally to link the WebSphere Commerce Suite to the existing ERP systems, allowing it to leverage the full power of its existing IT investments.

The implementation took six months, including designing the data structures, Web interfaces and load all of the Jarir product catalogue.

The key advantage for Jarir's suppliers is that they can enjoy a number of B2B functions developed in the Jarir Portal, eliminating much paperwork, and reducing the time and effort taken by personnel to process orders by allowing supplies to be scheduled, managed and monitored electronically ? instantly, and from anywhere.

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About SBM
Based in Jeddah, and with branches in Riyadh, Al-Khobar and Jubail, with over 500 employees and 50 years of experience in the Kingdom, Saudi Business Machines Limited (SBM), has played a leading role in the development of information technology in the Kingdom. SBM continues to power business and government sectors in the Kingdom with innovative products, integrated services and e-business solutions. Partnering with the world's technology leader, IBM, further extends SBM's status, positioning it as the most comprehensive information technology solutions provider in the region.

© Press Release 2005