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Esker Selected by NIBCO, INC. to Automate Sales Order Transactions into their SAP Application

International family-owned manufacturer of flow control products streamlining processes into SAP, eliminating hours of manual order entry

Madison, WI - November 05, 2007

Esker, the leader in document process automation solutions, announced today that NIBCO, INC. has implemented Esker DeliveryWare to automate their delivery of sales orders. Founded in 1904, NIBCO, INC. is a privately owned family business that has become a worldwide manufacturer of flow control products for residential, commercial construction, industrial, and irrigation markets. With Esker DeliveryWare, NIBCO, INC. is not only automating the receipt of sales order documents into their SAP solution, but also customizing the open platform software to develop new innovations tailored to the needs of their business.

Esker DeliveryWare provides a single platform for automating the flow of business transaction documents directly into and out of ERP systems and other enterprise applications, eliminating a large amount of manual order entry and physical document handling.

Prior to Esker DeliveryWare, NIBCO, INC. was using a different fax server solution to coordinate the delivery of fax documents to and from their customers. However, this solution was unable to streamline those documents directly into their SAP application. The team found Esker DeliveryWare and realized this document delivery technology would allow this integration, thus making the most of their SAP investment. Esker DeliveryWare not only integrated seamlessly with the system; it was also OCR capable, EDI compliant and flexible to customizations.

NIBCO, INC. processes more than 300,000 orders a year, totaling approximately 5.2 million individual order lines. Before turning to automation, the company employed 23 customer service representatives (CSRs) to handle the manual entry of each order line item. It was a tremendous burden on their resources as well as causing an increasing dissatisfaction among their customers.

Working together during the implementation process, Esker and NIBCO, INC. set up initial rules to govern the flow of inbound sales orders into NIBCO, INC.’s SAP application, including the OCR capabilities to recognize the validation forms associated with these documents. This was to ensure that the incoming sales orders would be recognized and processed correctly.

NIBCO, INC. also had a requirement unlike other Esker DeliveryWare users; they wanted everything to be available in real time. The team worked very closely with Esker to make this happen.

Executive quote

”The team has really enjoyed working with NIBCO, INC.,” said Steve Smith, Esker Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Americas. “They have really taken on opportunities to work with our open platform and push the technology to perform in ways that meet very specific requirements for both its employees and its customers. NIBCO, INC. began their business long before we were using technology to improve workflow processes. For a company that has probably seen it all we are excited to be the solution they have selected and work along people motivated to continue their success for many years to come.”

Customer quote

“In the past when processing huge orders – some with 300 order lines – it took hours for the CSRs to input all of the line items into our SAP solution. Now it takes 5 to 10 minutes at most,” said John Lee, IS Team Lead. “Our customers are happy as well. We’ve been able to deliver on the orders more quickly and have reduced the number of errors associated with manual handling.”

“Our CSRs wanted to be able to perform ‘real-time’ queries into our SAP solution. In our business, prices are always changing, so it was critical that all information be consistently up to date and available for us to access. It also makes our customers happy when we have the information they need immediately,” said Lee. “The cool thing about Esker is that the technology was developed to allow us to put in our own hooks to make it happen. And looking ahead we are excited to know that there are a countless number of other options available to us – all with a single piece of technology.”

About the company

Esker is a recognized leader in helping organizations eliminate manual processes, gain process visibility and control, and reduce the use of paper by automating the flow of documents into, within and out of the organization. With patented document delivery automation software and hosted document delivery services, Esker offers a total solution to automate every phase and every type of business information exchange. Customers achieve significant and immediate operational efficiencies, cost savings and measurable ROI in as little as three to six months. Founded in 1985, Esker operates globally with more than 80,000 customers and millions of licensed users worldwide. Esker has global headquarters in Lyon, France and U.S. headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, visit www.esker.com.

Contact details

Corporate Contact: Renee Thomas, Esker, Inc.

Tel: 608.828.6140 • Email: renee.thomas@esker.com

Investor Relations Contact: Emmanuel Olivier, Esker S.A.

Tel: 33 (0)4 72 83 46 46 • Email: olivier@esker.fr

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