SLIK (Standard Legacy Interface Kit) a product built for Fisher and Paykel Ltd to give them control of data transfers and business processes. At F&P SLIK runs 24x7 mostly unattended. We have recently released the product to the market.

Developed for Fisher and Paykel Ltd 

SLIK was developed in house for Fisher and Paykel Ltd and sits in the centre of their IT operations operating across a WAN involving New Zealand and Australia. It has been in operation at F&P since November 1998 and has run four million jobs for them in that time.

Data Integration 

SLIK manages and drives the whole process of periodically and automatically transferring data between relational database systems. SLIK manages database transfers by providing table and column mapping. Other data transfer protocols handled are XML, EDI and FTP, which means that data transfers are not restricted to your own domain. Data transformations are included in the drop down choices in the SLIK Interface Designer and there are also built in VB and Java scripting languages to facilitate more complex transformations. The EDI capabilities in SLIK are comprehensive.  

Email Alerts 

Emphasis on error trapping and reporting means that SLIK detects errors as they occur sending pager and/or email messages to alert designated persons. SLIK also optionally stops processing and rolls back the operation to the point the error occurred preventing further processing using erroneous data. This feature can save days of precious programmer time tracking faults and correcting errors, which have flowed through subsequent data. This facility can also be used as a means of sending emails containing attached data files on a scheduled basis to nominated persons. 

Data transfer interfaces set up in minutes 

Another important feature is the ease with which interfaces can be set up. Using the SLIK Interface Designer trained operators can set up interfaces in minutes saving work previously done by programmers writing scripts some of which could take hours of work. The Gartner Group have estimated in research that in a typical enterprise computing environment 35-40% of all programming is devoted to writing scripts solely for the transfer of data between different databases. 

Central point of control 

Because every interface resides in the SLIK control repository it affords a central point of control of your data transfers and operations. A log of all transfers is kept and all interfaces can be displayed using the built in Crystal Reports that can be printed or viewed on SLIK monitors throughout your organisation. 

Scheduling 

SLIK has a very comprehensive scheduler built in. In fact at F&P they use the scheduling in SLIK to control processes in third party software even though the third party software may have it's own scheduler. 

Business process management 

At F&P SLIK also manages many of the mundane but necessary tasks like backing up files or moving files between directories or computers, checking documents for pricing errors, sending shipping details to shipping agents and more. If you need to remember to do it now SLIK can automate that process for you. 

e-commerce 

Companies today are realising the benefits of e-commerce and being able to do business electronically. SLIK is the means to interact automatically and electronically with your clients and trading partners. 

JD Edwards OneWorld 

At Fisher and Paykel Ltd SLIK interacts well with OneWorld. In fact at F&P they use the scheduler in SLIK, in preference to the scheduler in OneWorld, to submit reports to remote servers. 

Recent additions 

A recent development in SLIK is its ability to "read" emails containing data, either the body or attachments, and mapping that into a database automatically. In fact a head office could send out details to its branch offices from its main database on a scheduled basis each morning and retrieve amended data back each night all on a completely automated basis. Not only that but SLIK could be told to look for values in the data which when found can cause it to carry out some other operation on that data. 

Mail address cleansing 

Working with an Australian company we are able to offer address cleansing by matching addresses from data supplied by the NZ and Australian Post Offices. This can mean big savings in mail costs and reduce the amount of rejected mail considerably.

Download a demonstration of SLIK here »