t used to take hours for the sales force at Atomic Ski USA Inc. to complete customer orders. But this week, the ski manufacturer is launching wireless software that cuts the process down to minutes.

Using eUnify integration software from Dharma Systems Inc., Atomic built a bridge between its back-end databases and e-Pad, a Web-based sales management application that Atomic implemented late last year. E-pad runs on handheld devices supporting the Palm operating system. With eUnify, some 35 salespeople can directly access Atomic's databases so they can process orders, check order status, and even compute pricing while visiting retailers. Before, an order that came through e-Pad had to be re-keyed into Atomic's AS/400 databases, a process that often took 30 minutes.

According to Randy Loubier, director of finance and administration at Atomic, in Amherst, N.Y., e-Pad and eUnify do more than carve time-consuming steps out of the sales process—they also ensure accuracy. "We have a complicated sales process," he says. "We were doing the calculations manually before, but we could easily screw that up. E-Pad does the calculations for us now, and eUnify provides the link to the back-end so that the order is put in accurately."

In addition, eUnify should also help Atomic transition the wireless system when its parent company, Amer Group plc in Finland, implements SAP applications next year, Loubier says. That's because the eUnify software lets companies link multiple apps with front-end systems such as e-Pad by treating the various back-end applications as a single source. Implementation time is quick, too: It took Atomic only four days to deploy eUnify.

"Dharma's software is interesting," says Roy Schulte, VP of application integration middleware and services at Gartner. "Developers don't have to know how to connect all these different back-end systems." All developers need to know is how to read and write to databases, he says.

One fault of the eUnify software is that it connects to a limited number of back-end systems: SAP, Siebel, and custom apps running on CICS and AS/400. "If some of your back-end systems can't connect to eUnify, it wouldn't be a viable solution for your company," Schulte says.

Dharma faces competition from IBM, Sybase, Tibco Software, and webMethods, which offer similar software.