TMW Systems on Thursday, June 3, announced that Innovative IES Release 9 is now in general availability following extensive QA and testing, including beta testing or managed releases during the first quarter with five existing customers. Innovative IES is an enterprise transportation software for the IBM i platform and became part of the TMW product family through an acquisition announced last year. TMW says R9 involved more than 40,000 hours of design, development and quality assurance work by the Innovative development team.
“R9 represents a significant milestone for us,” says Ray West, newly appointed general manager for Innovative software. The code base was converted from RPG III to IBM’s high-level Integrated Language Environment (RPG IV-ILE), West says. “This painstaking conversion was important to improve developer productivity and speed the release of future enhancements. It also benefits system resource utilization.”
For customers, R9 is designed to provide new functionality in accounts payable, customer service and dispatch, detention tracking, flexible EDI, hours of service, logistics management, mobile communications, rating, user-defined fields, operations reports and more. A key feature aiding companies with HOS and Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 compliance is a new “AvHrs” field that displays each driver’s available hours; the system calculates available hours by checking the log rules set up for each driver and deducting the hours already on duty.
The upgrade also incorporates additional logistics management, master files, payroll and user-defined functions. New settings include the ability to prenotify customers, driver managers or customer service representatives of potential detention situations. Interfaces with mobile communications providers CarrierWeb and DriverTech now are available. Adjustments to new driver log info, an EDI error reporting feature and improved handling of load tender transactions, including the ability to cross-reference multiple shipper location codes for EDI transactions, round out the offerings.
According to West, R9 is free to existing Innovative IES software customers who are active on support and maintenance agreements with TMW. “We are extremely pleased to oversee this major new release fewer than six months after our acquisition of Innovative Computing Corporation,” he says. “Our focus will now be on bringing new features and enhancements to market in a speedier fashion, in order to keep our customers current with the latest industry developments.”
