Irish software firms’ innovation brings SAP into Microsoft Office

17 Aug 2011

SAP specialists Minola Technology has partnered with Spanish Point Technologies, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, to develop cutting-edge technology to save businesses time and money.

Until now, users of both the industry-leading SAP business system and Microsoft Office applications – including Outlook, Word and Excel – have generally spent a significant amount of time switching between these systems.

With LookupPoint, users can select a business item in any email, document or spread sheet and the associated information from SAP will be displayed instantly in the same screen without having to leave the Microsoft Office environment.

According to Microsoft, a typical office worker spends more than 70pc of their time working in Microsoft Office applications.

“Instead of having to leave what they are doing in Microsoft Office and log into other applications such as SAP, users will be able to find the information they are looking for in an instant with LookupPoint,” says Robert Campbell of Minola Technology.

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Dublin-based medical supplies company Fannin, which has a portfolio of more than 40,000 products selling to hundreds of customers across the UK and Ireland, has described LookupPoint as an exceptional office tool.

“Complex and constantly changing pricing arrangements means that customers submit a high number of invoice queries to us, often in Excel or Word via email,” according to head of IT at Fannin, Conor O’Shea.

“Navigating through the different databases to collate the various pieces of information is a time-consuming process. But LookupPoint has streamlined and simplified this process. It also means our response time to customer queries is quicker.”

SAP is one of the most widely used business systems in the world. It is used by a wide range of leading Irish organisations across many industries.

“A low-cost, simple-to-use tool which helps productivity should be attractive to any firm hoping to stay competitive in today’s economic environment,” said Campbell.

Minola is not standing still and is now planning the development of LookupPoint for use with IBM iSeries-based applications in addition to SAP.

LookupPoint was one of six products selected by Microsoft before the release of Microsoft Office 2010 to be demonstrated at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference which more than 12,000 delegates attended.

LookupPoint has also been accepted to exhibit at the Gartner Symposium/IT Expo 2011 as part of the Emerging Technologies pavilion this coming October in Orlando, Florida.

Photo: Donal Cullen of Spanish Point Technologies and Robert Campbell of Minola Technology

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com