2nd March 2010
Hosted by Adobe at their prestigious Regent’s Park London office, this event builds on the successful formula of previous combined events. It features our morning briefing for prospective users of FLM with the theme of “Exploiting Adobe technologies in SAP” – emphasizing business cases and real world-case studies. This is followed in the afternoon by the second FLM user group meeting. Those organisations who intend to carry out reference visits as part of their evaluation of SAP interactive forms will find the conference of particular value as there will be ample opportunity over lunch to mix with existing users of the software.
Presentations already lined up include; an interesting view of new applications beyond forms examining correspondence generation, mobile communication and security, as well as a business case tool developed out of the results of a cost-benefit study evaluating Interactive Forms, commissioned by a major UK organization, SAP and Adobe.
Customer case-studies include the real world experience of OCS, the UK Department of Communities & Local Government and Surrey County Council.
The afternoon’s gathering of over 30 representatives from the expanding FLM customer base will be briefed on the new release FLM 295 whichs ships in March, along with forthcoming FLM-based capabilities in Correspondence, document creation and PDA support. There will be time to explore how to enable collaboration between organisations.
Details from John Poole, Business Development Manager at Arch: john.poole@arch.co.uk

Arch is delighted to announce that Linklaters Business Services have chosen Forms Lifecycle Manager to enable their implementation of SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe. FLM will be used in Linklaters’ HR department as well as to support even more streamlined processes in the partnership’s business operations.

Linklaters is one of the leading premium global law firms who undertake assignments for the world’s leading companies, financial institutions and governments, helping them to achieve their objectives by solving their most complex and important legal issues.

Simeon Brewer, Enterprise Architect, commented: “The Arch FLM product allows us to develop SAP Interactive Forms quickly, and with the skill sets we have in house. We look forward to working with Arch in the future as we roll out forms across our Business Services functions.”

Adobe have made the following press release:

Our congratulations to Arch, Adobe’s EMEA Solution Partner Recognition winner for the third quarter of 2009!

Arch was chosen for developing their own SAP Interactive “forms accelerator”— the powerful Forms Lifecycle Manager (FLM) product that gives users a robust and rich framework in which to exploit SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe. FLM allows for the fast creation of SAP Interactive Forms with little need for coding, providing native links from SAP to other Adobe products not contained with the SAP forms package, as well as additional controls not provided with out-of-the-box solutions, such as audit control. Forms created using Arch’s FLM product also can be copied across multiple customers with little rework, which Arch has demonstrated by launching a forms-sharing portal for public sector customers. Not only has Arch been instrumental in working with Adobe and SAP to win business, but they have also shown that they can bring business to Adobe through their own sales efforts. FLM will develop further in 2010 as the basis for Arch’s Correspondence Generator for SAP which will exploit Flex as a front end for a truly engaging user experience.

 Henry Blythe, CEO of Arch commented: “I am delighted to hear that we have won this accolade which is the second award for FLM. It reflects both the success of our product and the hard work of everyone at Arch. I would like to take this opportunity to thank both Adobe and SAP for their continuing support and partnership which has allowed us to grow our business and continue to deliver great projects for our customers. This ends a tremendous 2009 for Arch and we look forward to an even more successful 2010” .

Arch is once again expanding its technical team and is looking to recruit a Graduate Developer to join their Scottish office on the Stirling University Innovation Park.

Arch is the premier company in the implementation of SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe and is the creator of the multi-award winning and market leading application, Forms Lifecycle Manager (FLM™).  FLM is already being adopted by, amongst others, Camelot, Amey, Anglian Water, Linklaters, Informa as well as several central and local government bodies.

This new position offers great potential to a highly talented individual to work as a key part of Arch’s technical team, to develop applications both in line with company strategy and to meet the emerging needs of its clients, as well as working closely with the consulting arm of the firm to produce bespoke customer applications and provide customer support.  

Arch announced today that it will enter the fast growing Dynamic Enterprise Publishing (DEP) market with its product Correspondence Generator or FLM-CG. FLM-CG exploits the technical infrastructure of the company’s award-winning product FLM™  and Adobe Air as well as SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe, to deliver a unique dynamic enterprise publishing product for the SAP marketplace.

Correspondence Generator combines the usability of Adobe Flex-based Air interface and tight integration with SAP applications to make creating SAP-based correspondence and documents both straightforward and secure.

FLM-CG will ship to existing FLM customers in October 2009 and go on general release in January 2010. It  will be demonstrated at Arch’s Autumn Conference on the 8th October to be held in Adobe’s offices in Central London.

To register for the conference or more information please email john.poole@arch.co.uk or call +44 20 8987 0425 to speak to John directly.

For more information on the DEP market please follow this link:

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS21970309

Arch is well into preparations for its annual autumn conference.  Hosted by Adobe at their prestigious Regent’s Park London office, the event builds on the successful formula of previous conferences with the theme of “Exploiting Adobe technologies in SAP” – and an emphasis on business cases and real world-case studies.  Those organisations who intend to carry out reference visits as part of their evaluation of SAP interactive forms will find the conference of particular value.

Presentations already lined up include; an analysis by SAP of the importance of Adobe technology to its customers, an interesting view of new applications beyond forms examining mobile communication, as well as the results of a cost-benefit study evaluating Interactive Forms, commissioned by a major UK organisation in partnership with SAP UK and Adobe Europe. 

Customer case-studies planned include the real world experience of Amey Plc and the UK Department of Communities and Local Government.

The date for this session is Thursday October 8th 2009.  Invitations will be sent out soon.  

The day before, Wednesday 7th October 2009, will see Arch presenting at SAP UK’s Clockhouse Place office, as part of a morning event on HR Solutions.  Andy Gardner, Head of Technology at Arch, will be presenting the business case for Interactive forms within HR and there will be a customer presentation from Camelot Group who have successfully implemented a number of HR processes this year using Arch Forms Lifecycle Manager (FLM ™)

Details from John Poole, Business Development Manager at Arch: john.poole@arch.co.uk

On 16th July, in co-operation with Adobe, Arch ran a highly successful combined event which included the first FLM user group.

We were pleased to welcome delegates from 14 organisations and had 30 attendees for our morning briefing session on SAP Interactive forms by Adobe (SIFbA).  The emphasis was on exploiting and implementing SIFbA solutions and presentations included Adobe’s vision for the future use of the technology.  We were also pleased to welcome our guest speaker, John Burton, Project Owner at the Department of Communities and Local Government. The feedback was very positive: “the session proved useful and provided great insight into the solutions available” (UK Police service attendee).

The afternoon saw the gathering of representatives from the FLM customer base. This was a useful exchange between Arch management and FLM users. It was “great to listen to other company’s views and learn from their experience”(Services plc).

We were able to explore how to facilitate collaboration and the sharing of forms and methods, and we’ve take away 2 main things from this group; firstly, we’ve now established a new user forum on our FLM Connect site to allow customer input and discussions, as “FLMConnect will help to create a cohesive group and give quick opportunities to interact with other users”(UK Local Authority attendee). Secondly, by the end of August we will be setting out guidelines to allow customers to share forms.

SAP UK have implemented a PDF forms-based process using FLM for capturing specific sales information. The project was implemented rapidly using the FLM infrastructure and replaced an Excel spreadsheet.

The form is used by SAP UK’s specialist sales team and has been very well received by them: “The new form is much easier to complete and as a sales professional anything that makes my reporting task easier is to be welcomed”.

Jason Bath, Manager of the team complimented Arch: “Arch delivered just what I asked for very quickly and the team now definitely find it easier to get me the information I need to manage our sales process effectively.”   

FLM™ User Group   

July 16th 2009 sees the first FLM (Forms Lifecycle Manager) User Group meeting. 

This event has been put together to enable the FLM user community, development partners and Arch management team to get together to explore new capabilities in the product, best development practices and determine the best way forward for collaboration. 

The FLM framework provides the means to share components, methods and forms templates. 

The event, hosted in partnership with Adobe Systems at their prestigious London, Regents Park offices, will run from 13.30 though to 16.30, preceded by a lunch. 

Representatives from Amey PLC, Buckinghamshire County Council, Camelot Group, Cardiff City Council, Department for Communities and Local Government, LB Southwark, Surrey County Council and Capgemini will be there. 

Arch Business Development Manager John Poole says “We are committed to working with the community to maximise the value of our collective experience in exploiting FLM – The form server for SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe.”

SAP’s community-powered marketplace, EcoHub, launched their newsletter last month and featured Arch’s Head of Operations, Chris Scott:

Businesses Turn to Electronic Forms During Global Economic Downturn

Enterprises Turn to Electronic Forms

Electronic forms processes enable businesses to realize new cost efficiencies by automating paper-based processes and removing manual steps. The cost savings include the reduction of the direct labor costs associated with the current manual processes and also the reduction of physical material costs associated with printing, posting, and filing. Tangible business benefit can also be delivered through a reduction of office space, the delivery of environmental policies, and a reduction in printer hardware deployment and maintenance.

James Irving-Bell, Business Development Director at Adobe Systems Europe comments: “Adobe´s research has found that paper-based forms processes can be expensive as well as slow to complete. By implementing e-form processes savings of €90 for every submitted form can be achieved, with millions in savings every year for a mid-sized business.”

Due to a faster end-to-end process speed, a positive impact on customer service such as an increase in SLA¹ performance or a reduction in OCT² should be achieved. With a reduction in the number of data errors, the number of expensive exception processes is reduced, which helps to reduce the overall business or legal risk.

“Using the SAP Interactive Forms software by Adobe has meant that we have been able to implement a long-term manageable form strategy that has reduced our administration time and costs. It also provides a simple method for occasional users to access the SAP system,” says David Firth, Buckinghamshire County Council.

Arch is assisting more and more enterprises to identify and realize these business benefits using SAP Interactive Forms and FLM³.

1. Service-level agreement
2. Order cycle time
3. Forms Lifecycle Manager