Oracle NCA Delivers Functionality and Easy Implementation to Knouse Foods

Knouse Foods is a cooperative owned by more than 150 apple growers and markets products under the Lucky Leaf, Musselman's, Apple Time, Lincoln, and Speas Farm brands. The cooperative operates seven processing plants in four states, and seven distribution centers in six states.

A year ago, the company was looking for a way to provide their processing plants with access to financial and purchasing applications without increasing the number of information systems staff.

"Approximately two-thirds of our users work in non-headquarters locations," said Craig Hinkle, senior cost analyst at Knouse. "But we don't have information systems staff in each location to provide the administrative support required by traditional client/server applications."

In the fall of 1997, the company took a look at Oracle Network Computing Architecture. Hinkle and Eric Hoover, a database administrator, then created a team of users to evaluate the software and review functionality. By the spring of 1998, Knouse Foods had made the decision to move forward, and the actual implementation including training, testing and live rollout took only one month.

"Companies always talk about great functionality and easy implementation, but frankly I tend to be skeptical," said Hoover. "We were very pleasantly surprised with both the implementation and the actual performance of the system."

"Our users have required minimal training," said Hinkle. "Those users that were familiar with GUI systems and Oracle's Smart Client picked it up immediately."

For Knouse Foods, implementing Oracle Applications 10.7 NCA for its financial and purchasing applications was as fast and simple as they'd been told in the sales process. Oracle NCA will provide Knouse's seven processing plants with access to financial and purchasing applications without increasing the number of information systems staff.

"NCA is an opportunity to deploy applications throughout our organization and manage upgrades, patches and enhancements through a central location. In our case, we have everyone working off a single server," said Hinkle.

In addition to the administrative savings associated with a server-based architecture, Knouse has seen performance improvements and an ability to extend the use of supporting technologies. Additionally, users are now able to access applications from remote locations and their homes at speeds that equal or surpass even character-based client/server programs.

"Going in, we really weren't sure what the performance would be," said Hoover. "But our users have been pleased and we're seeing an increase in the amount of dial-in usage. When you combine the productivity improvements with the administrative savings, NCA has been quite a success for Knouse Foods."

Oracle Applications NCA (Network Computing Architecture) is a suite of enterprise business applications based on Java. Companies can implement enterprise applications that have all the benefits of graphical, client/server software without the cost and complexity of installing client software on each user's desktop.

Oracle Corporation is a leading supplier of software for information management. The company offers its database, application server, tools and application products, along with related consulting, education and support services, in more than 140 countries around the world.

For more information contact Oracle at (650) 506-7000.