XSOL’s North American operation, XSOL Corporation, has launched a program to attract Partners in the IT Services and Consulting market. Uptake has been excellent, with 10 new partners signing up to the program in 8 weeks. The program helps Partners use XSOL to create and deliver new services, and sell XSOL software to their clients. The program adds value to their business and helps deliver new products and services business. As part of the program XSOL will work with the new partners to assist them in delivering results and making sales.

The ten new partners are spread around the globe in locations as diverse as Belgium, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden and the United States of America and include a wealth of services experience amongst them.

The program will shortly be offered in the New Zealand and Australian markets. For more information please see our Partner page.

As the result of increased business activity in the North American market XSOL has launched XSOL Corporation, headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The growth in business has stemmed from a focus on the ERP software sector and in particular helping companies smooth their ERP implementation process, which has traditionally been both a lengthy and risky procedure.

Announcing the launch, XSOL CEO, John Blackham, said, “The weak economic climate in the North American market is raising interest in XSOL software, which can help organizations get tighter control over business activity, particularly in helping managing risk and exceptional events, whose impact can make the difference between a profit and a loss as margins tighten.”

XSOL Corporation Vice President, Michael Ligudzinski, has extensive experience in both the ERP software sector and the Business Process Management market, especially in the training and management consulting aspects. Mike’s market emphasis is on enabling customers to achieve results, such as a smooth ERP implementation, focusing on how to use XSOL to deliver business outcomes rather than just implementing software. According to Mike, “Downward price pressure in the Enterprise Software market is creating a very competitive environment at the same time as increasing software complexity raises the risk of failure in implementation. This is deterring companies from upgrading their systems at a time when more than ever they need to be responsive to market change. XSOL mitigates this risk and helps business become agile.”

Until last year XSOL had been represented in North America by a resale partner. Now, the move to have its own market presence is enabling XSOL to focus on building a reseller channel. As one recently appointed reseller said when undergoing XSOL InOrder product training, “Wow, this is so good, why doesn’t every business have it?”

XSOL InOrder, the heavily updated version of XSOL's popular business process tool XSOL Mapping, has gone into the controlled release phase. Several customers are now using XSOL InOrder in a live environment. Feedback has been highly favourable and XSOL will be progressively rolling out the new version to its customer base.

For a list of the changes and new features within XSOL InOrder version 4 click here.

After a 2-year hiatus in recruiting in-market partners XSOL has now introduced a new Channel Partner initiative. Said, XSOL CEO John Blackham, “Previously we had adopted the traditional approach with resellers, aimed primarily at ‘moving’ units of product. With the shift in market focus towards outcomes and results we have adopted a more collaborative approach to the market; more in the nature of a true partnership.”

Newly appointed UK partners, H3 Partners , are a case in point. Together with XSOL’s UK CEO, John Kopij, they have designed a go-to-market strategy that is focused on the results they can deliver to customers, using a three step process designed to demonstrate and prove to a prospective customer how the results will be achieved. This differs significantly from the current Enterprise Software sales approach which focuses primarily on the features of the software and where these will be applied to the customer’s business.

The UK programme addresses CTR (Cost, Time and Risk); i.e. help reduce the cost, time risk of business activity, with a particular emphasis on enabling business people to first understand their risks and then create mitigating processes that help address them automatically. In short, XSOL UK and H3 Partners are focused on addressing the problems that keep managers awake at night.

The inaugural XSOL Mapping User Group Conference enjoyed excellent attendance from a wide cross section of users. Speakers covered a variety of topics including; Selling Business Process to Your Organisation, Publishing XSOL on Your Intranet, Manukau City Council's Journey with XSOL, Using XSOL to Strengthen an Organisation’s Governance Practices, XSOL Automation and a preview of Release 4 – XSOL InOrder. The conference was a great opportunity for users to network and share experiences with each other.

XSOL Customers: If you want more information about the XSOL User Group please contact Janice Miller at janice.miller@manukau.govt.nz or join the XSOL Google Group!

Version 4 of XSOL's business process mapping tool, now renamed XSOL InOrder, includes a major upgrade to the user interface and navigation pathways, giving a Windows 7 style look and feel, as well as many new features. Major new functionality includes a Spellchecker, Model Search, Roles Report documentation output, Improved Error Checking, Sample Models and much more. To find out about these and other improvements within R4 contact your XSOL supplier.

With activity around XSOL’s software in the UK market growing, XSOL UK has been established to give the company the market presence required to bid for large contracts. XSOL UK is a joint venture with John Kopij, a founder of XSOL’s first UK Client, Hedra Ltd, a high-end consulting firm specializing in managing transformational change. John’s interest in XSOL stemmed from witnessing the low level of success that traditional software projects experienced and the potential for XSOL’s model-based solution to dramatically lift the success rate of the custom projects with which he typically engaged.

XSOL UK is well positioned to benefit from the UK’s current economic situation, since XSOL software is ideally suited to helping companies identify inefficency and how to exploit new revenue opportunities.

STATE is a key brand of IAG New Zealand which is New Zealand’s largest general insurer, with over 2,000 employees and a nationwide network of sales centres, branches and call centres.

As part of a program of work to drive continuous innovation into the business, XSOL worked closely with the STATE Business Improvement team - providing business process software and consulting services.

“XSOL enabled us to map our end to end insurance service processes from quote to claim in just 9 weeks” says Christine Beckett, Business Process Improvement Manager for STATE. “Because the software is easy to use; provides a great structure, but is immensely adaptable, it facilitated great collaboration within mapping workshops enabling us to capture, amend and agree our processes rapidly. With our processes now published and easily accessible to the whole organisation, we have a great foundation on which to develop process training and model innovative changes to our business operations”

“For our part,” says Pete Maung, XSOL COO, “we are delighted to be working with a market leader such as IAG. Their commitment to process-based transformation is a trend we see emerging across the marketplace, and we look forward to the productivity dividends that will follow for New Zealand.”

The STATE team are anticipating further gains from XSOL software by implementing XSOL Automation to further embed their innovation process and continuous improvement into the business.

The IAG Group was placed in the Davos Global 100 list of the world’s most sustainable organisations.

This year Coventry University are offering future business leaders a new dimension to their education.

Under the direction of Dr Emanuel Gomes, Coventry's Masters in International Business course prepares students for international management, developing their ability to think strategically, communicate effectively and execute complex business projects within the global business environment.

To help students visualize and understand the dynamics of the issues that will confront them as business managers, the university has selected XSOL software to underpin the Strategic Business Transformation component of the course.

"We could immediately see the value that XSOL's structured approach to collaboration, discovery and communication of business processes would bring to the programme," said Dr Gomes. "In a global business environment, the ability to adapt quickly requires high levels of visibility and clarity in these areas. This is where XSOL can assist organisations trying to improve their business operations."

XSOL CEO John Blackham added, "The issues that Coventry University are addressing are critical for business in the 21st century. Managers must fully comprehend processes for which they are responsible so that they can respond to changes in market conditions effectively. XSOL is delighted to be involved with Coventry University in this challenge."

The new MSc programme will be running from the end of September, 2008. The course has two intakes each year, with the next one being February, 2009.

XSOL has been named one of NZ’s 25 most strategically important ICT firms in CIO Magazine’s annual survey - published November 2007.

This list, featuring “vendors that CIOs and their C-suite colleagues can not ignore”, was selected by an International panel of judges.

Appointment to APEC Business Advisory Council - 29 August 2007

Prime Minister Helen Clark today announced the appointment of John Blackham as one of New Zealand's three representatives on APEC's Business Advisory Council (ABAC).

"John Blackham is the Chief Executive of software company XSol Limited. He brings extensive experience of working in the high end information technology sector in New Zealand to ABAC," Helen Clark said.

For the rest of the story visit: http://www.beehive.govt.nz/ViewDocument.aspx?DocumentID=30469.

Former Microsoft researcher joins XSOL team - 29 June 2007.

New Zealand’s leading process software company, XSOL, has recently welcomed a new senior developer to their team.

Simon Corston-Oliver recently returned to New Zealand after nearly thirteen years living in the United States.

Corston-Oliver spent ten years working at Microsoft Research, Seattle, in the areas of computational linguistics, machine learning and web search.

With a PhD in Computational Linguistics from the University of California, he holds eight patents and has published more than 30 academic papers.

Corston-Oliver chose to work for XSOL as it would give him a chance to stretch his abilities.

He is excited to join the XSOL team, where he will be assisting with the development of the “next generation of XSOL’s flagship products”.

“The idea of going from a description of a business process to 90,000 lines of SQL code at the push of a button, that’s ambitious,” he says.

Since starting at XSOL, Corston-Oliver has been familiarising himself with the system. “It’s at a far more advanced stage than I thought it would be,” he says.

He looks forward to concentrating on building up an entire system rather than doing a number of smaller projects with no overall view.

Corston-Oliver says XSOL’s software is “incredibly innovative” and expects it will make a “profound impact in the IT industry”.

“What XSOL is doing is very cutting-edge,” he says. “I’ve been impressed by the coherence of it – everyone at XSOL has a very good idea of what they’re trying to achieve.”

XSOL Partner Success in the UK and Holland - 15 May, 2007.

In Holland, XSOL Channel Partner, KMO www.kmo-ict.nl, have made initial sales to several Consulting organisations.

“We began working with XSOL late in 2006, with a focus in the Benelux marketplace,” said Richard Kickert, Director of KMO.

“There’s been a huge amount of interest from organisations looking to manage change and optimise business processes. We’re delighted to see the first of these ‘powering up’ with XSOL software.”

In the UK, the team at Red Admiral Consulting www.redadmiralconsulting.com have been working with XSOL for some time, with a goal of delivering business transformation to their clients.

“From inception, we saw the XSOL proposition as core to delivering on that vision.” said Red Admiral’s founder, John Kopij. 

Recent clients have included companies in the IT sector. “In this area,” John adds, “managers can easily relate to the business benefits of visibility and adaptability that XSOL delivers.”