client successes with collaborative solutions from ibm. how ibm® workplace™ and lotus software...

Client successes with collaborative solutions from IBM.How IBM ® Workplace™ and Lotus software transforms business for SAP customers

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SAP integration solutionsTo support your business objectives

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CONTENTS: BY NAME BY GEOGRAPHY BY INDUSTRY

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GET MORE fROM YOUR SAP INvESTMENTS By choosing SAP applications, you’ve already taken important steps to optimize your business

operations. With IBM® Workplace™ and Lotus® software products as well as IBM’s extensive

experience implementing and supporting SAP solutions for clients, you can further increase organi-

zational productivity and effectiveness as you extend and complement your SAP investments.

Rely on IBM Workplace and Lotus software products to:

Integrate SAP applications with other applications.

Add personalization, collaboration and document management capabilities.

Create new business processes and functions quickly and flexibly.

Increase user and development productivity as you reduce costs.

IBM® Workplace™ for SAP ® Software is an offering that complements and provides extended

functionality for SAP and non-SAP applications. By integrating key business functions into a

single contextual view, streamlining processes and simplifying collaboration, the IBM Workplace

for SAP Software offering can help to dramatically enhance employee productivity and enable

greater innovation across your organization.

The IBM Workplace for SAP Software offering does this by providing tools and capabilities that

help enable rapid composition of new business processes. SAP and non-SAP systems can be

integrated faster, and they also are enriched with new functions such as e-forms, dashboards,

scorecards, alerting, document and content management, instant messaging, team rooms and

presence awareness.

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The tools and capabilities provided by the Workplace for SAP Software offering help you:

Improve usability and time to value in creating new business processes.

Simplify collaboration.

Enable better decision making.

Reduce costs.

IBM Lotus Notes® software now offers Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions. These are solu-

tions that are specifically designed to make it easier for employees to access the information they

need to improve their productivity and reduce costs. Integrate and extend the productivity capa-

bilities of the Lotus Notes application into SAP business processes, and integrate and expand

SAP into Lotus Notes software. Incorporate common business tasks such as:

Calendering.

Time tracking.

Contact management.

Report generation.

Approval workflows.

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IBM WebSphere® Portal Version 6.0 software can increase organizational productivity and

responsiveness by integrating new and existing business solutions more quickly across the

enterprise—by user community or job role. WebSphere Portal Version 6.0 software provides:

Orchestrated workflow enhancements to implement business processes through portals.

Templates to build, deploy and revise portals faster.

New tools like IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory software to quickly build business services that

integrate with SAP software.

IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory Version 6.0 software makes it fast and easy to create, cus-

tomize, deploy and maintain robust portlets and composite applications that leverage existing

SAP business processes and data.

Create enterprise quality, custom portlets easily, enabling users to search, view, sort, create,

update and delete SAP data.

Allow business users and end users to personalize and customize their SAP applications.

Create a richly integrated portal experience by enabling portlets to interact as they access data

from disparate databases and systems.

The following success stories demonstrate what IBM software makes possible. They describe

how IBM clients solved demanding, real-world business challenges—and reaped real results—

by incorporating IBM Workplace software into their enterprise SAP environments.

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CLIENT GEOGRAPHY INDUSTRY PAGEBelgacom Group Europe Telecommunications 8

Brady Corporation North America Manufacturing 14

Broward County Schools North America Education 21

DaimlerChrysler Europe and North America Automotive 31

Discovery Communications North America Media and entertainment 38

Eicher Asia Automotive 46

Elektra Comercial North America Retail 54

Gemeente Twenterand Europe Government 62

Kempchen Dichtungstechnik Europe Manufacturing 67

M.J. Maillis Group Europe and North America Manufacturing 73

Michel Thierry Europe Automotive 78

Nextra Europe Banking and financial 91

OKI Europe Europe Electronics 98

Petrolóleos de Venezuela South America Petrochemical 103

Skyworks North America Telecommunications 109

TransAlta North America Utilities 115

United Nations North America Government and public service 121

CONTENTS: BY NAME

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GEOGRAPHY CLIENT INDUSTRY PAGEAsia Eicher Automotive 46

Europe Belgacom Group Telecommunications 8

Europe and North America DaimlerChrysler Automotive 31

Europe Gemeente Twenterand Government 62

Europe Kempchen Dichtungstechnik Manufacturing 67

Europe and North America M.J. Maillis Group Manufacturing 73

Europe Michel Thierry Automotive 78

Europe Nextra Banking and financial 91

Europe OKI Europe Electronics 98

North America Brady Corporation Manufacturing 14

North America Broward County Schools Education 21

North America and Europe DaimlerChrysler Automotive 31

North America Discovery Communications Media and entertainment 38

North America Elektra Comercial Retail 54

North America and Europe M.J. Maillis Group Manufacturing 73

North America Skyworks Telecommunications 109

North America TransAlta Utilities 115

North America United Nations Government and public service 121

South America Petrolóleos de Venezuela Petrochemical 103

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INDUSTRY CLIENT GEOGRAPHY PAGEAutomotive DaimlerChrysler Europe and North America 31

Automotive Eicher Asia 46

Automotive Michel Thierry Europe 78

Banking and financial Nextra Europe 91

Education Broward County Schools North America 21

Electronics OKI Europe Europe 98

Government Gemeente Twenterand Europe 62

Government and public service United Nations North America 121

Manufacturing Brady Corporation North America 14

Manufacturing Kempchen Dichtungstechnik Europe 67

Manufacturing M.J. Maillis Group Europe and North America 73

Media and entertainment Discovery Communications North America 38

Petrochemical Petrolóleos de Venezuela South America 103

Retail Elektra Comercial North America 54

Telecommunications Belgacom Group Europe 8

Telecommunications Skyworks North America 109

Utilities TransAlta North America 115

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BELGACOM GROUPEurope: Telecommunications

Belgacom—A leading supplier for global telecommunications solutions.

ChallengeImprove customer service and streamline business processes

SolutionWeb services technology to enable multisystems integration with IBM WebSphere

Portal server, SAP, PeopleSoft or Microsoft .NET systems

Key BenefitsWidening the B2B scope through Web services

“We build our future on a service-oriented way of developing applications and their integration on the Web services standards. The Web services will be the evolution of our hub and spoke application integration platform.”

—René Dewil, IT strategy manager, Belgacom Group

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BELGACOM GROUP (continued) Headquartered in Brussels, Belgacom SA is the leading supplier of global telecommunications

solutions in the Belgian market. The company is owned by the Belgian state (51 percent) and

ADSB Telecommunications (49 percent), which is an international consortium made up of SBC

(now part of AT&T), Singapore Telecom, TDC and a group of investors from the financial sector.

The Belgacom Group’s services include local, intercity and international voice and data services,

cellular telephone services, satellite services, carrier services and all Internet-related services.

Its mobile subsidiary Belgacom Mobile had more than four million customers in December 2002.

Belgacom has offered Belgacom World Solutions since 1996, which cover more than 220 countries

and territories and through which customers can connect their various business centers based on

a single telecom standard. At the end of 2002, the Belgacom Group had 19,003 employees.

The need to improve customer service and streamline business processesSome years ago, Belgacom started its Belgacom e-business Strategic Transformation (BeST)

initiative, with the goal of becoming an e-business leader in Belgium. This transformation had an

important impact for the Belgacom IT Department, which was seeking to evolve into a high per-

formance organization. By applying new technologies, like Java™ 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition

(J2EE) and portal, to Web enable several of its internal applications, the company wanted self-

service Web applications to be integrated with its various legacy systems that managed supply

chain processes, like billing, provisioning and order fulfillment. The goal was to offer business-to-

consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) applications through its portal.

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BELGACOM GROUP (continued) Since early 1995, the Belgacom IT Delivery organization has used an early concept of services

by the adoption of a hub and spoke model based on BEA Tuxedo technology. A central organi-

zation and central systems have been put in place to interconnect all front-end applications or

packages through middleware software to their back-end systems and enterprise data.

Vincent Ghislain, Belgacom IT strategy manager, says, “With the emergence of new stable tech-

nologies, like J2EE and Web services, and with the vendor market tendencies to integrate them

into an application server suite of products, we believe that our hub and spoke model can evolve

in the coming years to a pure service-oriented architecture. We know it’s time to think about our

new generation of application architecture.”

Web services technology enables multisystems integration with IBM WebSphere Portal server, SAP, PeopleSoft or .NET systemsOne of Belgacom’s first goals was to provide a common Web interface integration, with security

managed by IBM Tivoli® Access Manager software, and then to begin the B2C project using

IBM WebSphere Portal server. Belgacom’s IT management team selected IBM WebSphere and

IBM WebSphere Portal software because of their unsurpassed ability to support horizontal Web

integration. The company now has more than 30 WebSphere software-based applications in

production, which run on Sun Solaris servers.

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BELGACOM GROUP (continued) The B2C application, which is designed to facilitate customer self-service via the Web, uses

IBM WebSphere Portal Extend software and supports more than one million households across

Belgium. The B2B and supply chain solutions were designed to provide key services to more

than 2,000 Belgacom business partners. The existing application is integrated with WebSphere

software using a proprietary middleware layer, which is based on BEA Tuxedo. Belgacom is

using IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer software as the standard development tool

for new J2EE applications.

Belgacom also uses an increasing number of Web services technologies—such as XML, HTTP,

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Java Connectors—to connect J2EE applications

with proprietary applications such as PeopleSoft, SAP and Microsoft® .NET.

“We believe the Web services standards will become pervasive in our industry. The technol-

ogy can be used to define components in application development and then to reuse these

components. Web services are the basis for a service-oriented architecture and can in such

an architecture perform many application integration functions,” says René Dewil, Belgacom IT

strategy manager.

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BELGACOM GROUP (continued) IBM Web services will also be used in conjunction with WebSphere software to integrate .NET

packages (Microsoft Office applications). The design of multitiered solution architectures is typi-

cally chosen to maximize the levels of data abstraction. One of the main reasons for this level of

data abstraction is to enable flexibility within the architecture to take advantage of future technolo-

gies. SOAP provides this additional interoperability capability between .NET and J2EE business

objects running on WebSphere technology.

“We build our future on a service-oriented way of developing applications and their integration on

the Web services standards,” continues Mr. Dewil. “The Web services will be the evolution of our hub

and spoke application integration platform, in which currently we use several other technologies.”

Widening the B�B scope through Web servicesBelgacom expects numerous benefits from its IBM Web services solutions on WebSphere

software, including the following:

Increased customer satisfaction as well as employee productivity as a result of Web

self-service capabilities

Increased sales over the Internet as a result of improved cross-selling capabilities, which can

incorporate personalized promotions

Decreased integration effort between applications and packages

Easier potential future end-to-end business processing integration

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BELGACOM GROUP (continued) Last and not least, with the current architecture being closely aligned to Web services, it will be a

straightforward conversion from the existing interfaces and messaging protocols to the relevant

standard technologies. So with a relatively small effort, significant gains are expected by opening

up the interface to widely accepted Internet standards.

“The use of Web services is a major part of our IT strategy; Web services will be used in our

upcoming projects and we expect them also to integrate other technologies,” states Mr. De

Backer, vice president IT.

For additional information on Belgacom, please visit:

www.belgacom.be

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BRADY CORPORATIONNorth America: Manufacturing

Brady goes global with SAP and IBM.

ChallengeTo increase internal efficiency and improve the quality and speed of information transfer;

to gain a clear view of performance across global operations; and to code page conver-

sion to exploit new SAP releases

SolutionMySAP.com, SAP R/3, SAP BW, SAP EBP applications; IBM WebSphere Application

Server, IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite, IBM Lotus Domino, IBM Lotus Notes, IBM

DB2 Universal Database software; IBM ^ iSeries hardware; implementation per-

formed by IBM Business Consulting Services

Key BenefitsImproved visibility of data across global operations; faster, more accurate, more consis-

tent reporting; greater internal efficiency; better response to customer needs; reduced

procurement costs

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“As part of the SAP EBP project, we were able to consolidate the number of vendors on our system, which has contributed to our cost savings. We now order almost all office supplies electronically without ever needing to raise a purchase order, and the system handles repeat purchasing automatically.”

—Ann Nettesheim, business intelligence manager, Brady Corporation

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BRADY CORPORATION (continued) Brady Corporation has increased internal efficiency and improved the speed and quality of deci-

sion making with a comprehensive SAP and IBM solution. Based around SAP R/3, the company’s

new e-business platform also incorporates transactional Web sites powered by IBM WebSphere

Commerce Suite software, and internal information portals running on IBM Lotus Domino® soft-

ware. The SAP system has provided a massive improvement in the visibility of key performance

data and delivered much-needed commonality across Brady’s global operations.

Identifying the challengeBased in Wisconsin, in the United States, Brady Corporation manufactures and markets a broad

range of identification solutions, from high-performance labels and signs to label-application

and data-collection systems. With about 50,000 products sold in more than 100 countries,

and a global workforce of 3,000, Brady is a world leader in its market. Clients range from small

manufacturing firms to global high-tech clients such as Nokia and Motorola, and nearly half of all

Brady’s revenues come from outside the U.S., underlining its commitment to a global business

model. The company sells through several channels and places particular significance on indi-

rect distribution partners: it runs a worldwide network of 3,500 distributors and resellers.

Following internal growth and a number of acquisitions, Brady had accumulated 18 separate enter-

prise resource planning (ERP) systems across its global operations by the end of the 1990s. This

fragmentation of IT went hand in hand with a lack of operational cohesion, and it was becoming

clear that the impeded flow of information was an obstacle to more efficient business practices.

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BRADY CORPORATION (continued) Brady set out to overhaul its global systems and processes, acknowledging that the ability to

plan, deploy and execute strategy on a global basis was the key to maintaining growth and

market leadership. By replacing its fragmented systems with a common e-business platform

linking all parts of the enterprise, both internally and externally, Brady aimed to increase effi-

ciency and collaboration, and improve customer service. Brady selected SAP R/3 as its core ERP

system, because of the vendor’s leadership and long experience in the market. IBM Business

Consulting Services assisted with the initial implementation and provided training to ensure that

Brady could run the platform without relying on external consultants.

Global coverageBrady’s SAP system now covers 65 percent of all operations, and the company is continuing

to roll the software out to new territories and business streams. The ultimate goal is not 100

percent coverage—some Brady offices are too small to sustain their own instances—but com-

monality across most operations is already delivering significant improvements in the visibility

of data and the speed of internal information transfer. Prior to the implementation of SAP, the

disjointed nature of information systems was a major drain on operational efficiency, and slowed

down or prevented the delivery of key performance indicators to decision makers. With its fully

integrated SAP R/3 system, Brady enjoys faster access to data, and has a common standard for

communication between different business streams. Says Ann Nettesheim, business intelligence

manager, “Visibility is a huge plus. Previously, it might take anywhere from a week to a month to

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BRADY CORPORATION (continued) get a breakdown of sales figures for a particular product range across a particular region. Even

then, differences in part-numbering and customer-numbering schemes meant that you couldn’t

be sure you had got back the information you requested. Reporting with mySAP Business Intel-

ligence is much easier: simply phenomenal compared to what we had before!”

In addition, the new SAP system provides far more detail and speed in Brady’s view of its global

customers. Previously, it was difficult and time-consuming to summarize sales or profitability

for global customers, because the relevant data was held in different formats in incompatible

databases. The only commonality was at a very high level, so it was difficult for global account

managers to make accurate or timely decisions. Now, decision makers can act more quickly and

on the basis of more accurate information. With improved and accelerated information on sales

and marketing, Brady also has a better understanding of its customers’ current and past pur-

chasing behavior, enabling it to meet their needs more precisely and at lower cost.

MySAP SRM for procurement cost savingsUsing SAP Enterprise Buyer Professional (SAP EBP), a component of the mySAP Supplier Rela-

tionship Management (SRM) solution, Brady has transformed its procurement processes, saving

money and freeing up employees to work on higher value-added projects. Its procurement portal

enables office supplies and other nonmanufacturing supplies to be sourced directly from preap-

proved vendors, at specially negotiated prices. The solution’s use of evaluated receipt settlement

(where no invoice is created, and payment is made following receipt of the product) makes the

process faster and produces important administrative cost savings. Says Ann Nettesheim, “As

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BRADY CORPORATION (continued) part of the SAP EBP project, we were able to consolidate the number of vendors on our system,

which has contributed to our cost savings. We now order almost all office supplies electroni-

cally without ever needing to raise a purchase order, and the system handles repeat purchasing

automatically.” The move to electronic procurement is part of a wider strategy, which also aims to

switch all inbound ordering to electronic data interchange (EDI) or the Web.

MySAP Business IntelligenceA key component of Brady’s SAP solutions is mySAP Business Intelligence (mySAP BI), which

enables decision makers to access fast and accurate reports on a number of aspects of perfor-

mance. SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) gives users more reporting flexibility

and power than they previously had, and reduces the strain on the main SAP R/3 systems. Some

transactional reporting is still carried out in the SAP R/3 environment, but management reporting

and summaries are handled exclusively in SAP BW. Brady’s BW has recently been expanded to

include more sales and marketing data, such as operational data at the level of order details and

customer contact details. This has resulted in improved understanding of customer behavior and

greater efficiency and ease in direct marketing campaigns.

Sharing the benefits of informationAs part of its initiative to improve cohesion across the enterprise, Brady aims to maximize the

utility of its SAP systems by deploying the information they contain both internally and externally.

Knowledge is always an important currency in business, and Brady has invested heavily in

ensuring its efficient transfer between employees and across departments and business

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BRADY CORPORATION (continued) streams. Using a number of employee portals built with Lotus Domino software, the company

has enabled increased collaboration between team members, driven up efficiency and freed

up valuable employee time by automating administrative procedures. Externally, Brady is using

IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite software to power a number of customer- and supplier-facing

e-business portals. The company’s development strategy aims at easily replicated solutions,

adapting existing Web offerings to new business streams and geographies in order to acceler-

ate deployment and minimize development and support costs. Taking a modular approach with

a single technological skill set (IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite software) brings economies of

scale and reduces training costs. Brady’s distributor extranet provides registered users with 24-

hour access to product pricing, availability data, order status and open invoice listings, and also

enables them to place orders online. The solution has a front end built on WebSphere Commerce

Suite software, and is seamlessly integrated with SAP R/3 at the back end. A similar customer-

facing Web site is also directly linked into back-end systems, ensuring seamless e-business and

fast, accurate fulfillment.

Decoding the benefitsBrady wanted to upgrade from version 2.0B of SAP Business Information Warehouse to 3.0B, in

order to take advantage of new functionality, particularly generic delta capabilities. The company

also wanted to remain on its existing IBM AS/400® (now IBM System i™) platform, but the new

release of SAP BW required double-byte (ASCII) coding, rather than the single-byte (EBCDIC)

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BRADY CORPORATION (continued) coding standard on the IBM AS/400 system. “To avoid moving off the IBM AS/400 system, which

has always proved highly reliable and robust, we carried out a code-page conversion. We viewed

it as a relatively low-risk task, certainly when compared to the alternative, which was to move

away from our server platform of choice,” comments Craig Welch, SAP Basis manager at Brady.

With advice from SAP, Brady carried out an in-place conversion, rather than exporting and reim-

porting the whole system. The whole upgrade project, including the conversion, took just six weeks

from development to production, and carrying it out in place kept the risk to a minimum. Says Craig

Welch, “I wouldn’t consider the code page conversion to be a particularly difficult task—it would

have been far more complex and costly to move away from our System i infrastructure. We were

initially surprised when we realized we would have to move to ASCII to take advantage of the new

release of BW, but the conversion went very smoothly and presented no major problems.” Now that

the conversion is complete, Brady benefits from the latest SAP BW features without sacrificing the

reliability and scalability it has come to expect from its System i servers.

for more informationLearn more about WebSphere software at:

ibm.com/websphere

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BROWARD COUNTY SCHOOLSNorth America: Education

Broward County Schools and the transformational power of IBM On Demand Workplace for Education.

ChallengeTransform an IT environment that inhibited information access and stakeholder productivity—

hindering student achievement and compliance with mandates such as the No Child Left

Behind Act

Why IBM?IBM offers a cost-effective and powerful platform designed to provide students, parents,

educators and administrators with integrated, role-based access to educational resources,

applications and collaborative tools

SolutionTeam with IBM Global Services and IBM Software Group to create role-based portals

for on demand information access and collaboration among teachers, parents, students,

administrators, suppliers and partners

Key BenefitsIntegrates people, processes and information

Can help improve decision making

Can help increase efficiency and effectiveness in school operations—

enhances flexibility for all stakeholders

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“The IBM On Demand Workplace for Education suite enables SBBC to achieve improved decision making at reduced cost and with greater responsiveness to meet the on demand challenges faced by K–12 schools today.”

—Vijay Sonty, chief information officer, School Board of Broward County

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BROWARD COUNTY SCHOOLS (continued) Rarely do grand and elegant visions turn out to be eminently practical. That is precisely the case,

however, with Project Knexus,* the internal code name the School Board of Broward County

(SBBC) has given to its implementation of the IBM On Demand Workplace for Education suite.

Project Knexus aims to transform education in Broward County by providing integrated, role-

based access to district information, educational resources, applications and collaborative tools

for all stakeholders. No small achievement given that, as the nation’s sixth largest school district,

SBBC has an IT environment similar to those found in Fortune 500 companies—large, complex,

distributed and populated with many applications that are difficult to integrate.

The first phase of the four-part project has passed the pilot stage and is scheduled for deploy-

ment in March 2006, when it is projected that 2,000 administrators, principals and guidance

counselors will gain portal-based access to all the resources they need to do their jobs—particu-

larly the educational performance monitoring mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act. The IBM

On Demand Workplace suite ties data together into a single central repository for seamless review

and reporting. This shared access point provides educators access to the information and collab-

orative tools necessary to make faster, more informed decisions about teaching and learning.

Key components

SoftwareIBM WebSphere Portal Extend software

IBM WebSphere Application Server software

IBM Workplace Collaboration Services software

IBM Workplace Managed Client software

IBM Tivoli Access Manager software

IBM Tivoli Identity Manager software

IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator software

IBM WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind™ Edition software

IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory software

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BROWARD COUNTY SCHOOLS (continued)Projected to be fully phased in over the next four years, Project Knexus is designed to support

400,000 users, putting SBBC at the forefront of IT innovation in public schools and helping it

transform education one student at a time. “If you step back, Project Knexus should give users

everything they need in a timely and efficient manner,” says Vijay Sonty, chief information officer

at SBBC and the intellectual force behind the initiative. “All users need is a device and a browser

to gain integrated, convenient access on demand—anytime, anywhere, via any device and per-

sonalized for their roles. Information is placed at the fingertips of all education stakeholders.”

Sonty believes Project Knexus will facilitate innovative working and more support for each student,

preparing them for future success. As a bonus, by standardizing on IBM, SBBC gains a unified

architecture and deployment model to help realize bottom-line benefits in reliability, security, scal-

ability and management.

Succeeding in a challenging environmentThe School Board of Broward County has 231 K–12 schools, 274,000 students and 19,000

teachers. With more than 300 applications running on more than 600 servers and 110,000 client

devices, SBBC doesn’t lack IT challenges. Those most pressing include improving the timeliness

and accuracy of information delivery and enhancing the ineffective processes—such as redun-

dant data entry and multiple sign-ons for applications—typical of fragmented environments.




BROWARD COUNTY SCHOOLS (continued)Adding to the difficulty are mandates for aligning educational technology with the direction

set by the state and federal government, such as e-learning and the No Child Left Behind

Act, a mandate calling for educational performance monitoring and accountability that

depends on easy access to information from a variety of isolated data stores.

Such data silos can give rise to redundancies, inefficiencies and financial restraints, all

of which constrain student achievement. And there is little aggregation of student data,

making information redundant and difficult to share. This isolation prevents educators from

seeing the big picture, thwarting the kind of assessments and accountability mandated by

the No Child Left Behind Act.

“The goal of the No Child Left Behind Act is for all students to meet appropriate grade-level

performance standards. To accomplish that, you need to create benchmarks depending

on where you are as a school district, and the same needs to be done for each student,

teacher and school,” Sonty says. “We have a data warehouse with all historical and trend-

ing data and a student information system with transactional data, but without integration,

accessing the needed information is tedious at best.”

Such challenges led SBBC to begin formulating the solution that would eventually take

shape as Project Knexus.

“All users need is a device and a browser to gain integrated, convenient access on demand—anytime, anywhere, on any device and personalized for their roles. Information is placed at the fingertips of all education stakeholders.”

—Vijay Sonty, chief information officer, School Board of Broward County




BROWARD COUNTY SCHOOLS (continued)Choosing the IBM On Demand Workplace suiteIn November of 2004, SBBC began laying out a series of solution requirements:

Multiple levels of integration for easy information access

Anytime, anywhere access via any device

Varied resources for online collaboration

Customized interfaces for different roles and stakeholders

Support for open standards and interoperability

Infrastructure reliability, availability, scalability and security

Heterogeneous application integration support

Easier and more cost-effective centralized management

Ease of integration with various SAP applications

SBBC considered a number of approaches, ultimately choosing the IBM On Demand Workplace

for Education suite running on IBM ^ pSeries® servers. IBM was chosen because its On

Demand Business strategy best aligns with SBBC’s need for integration of people, business pro-

cesses, applications and data in a network-centric, manageable environment. The expertise and

support provided by IBM Business Consulting Services and IBM Business Partners also factored

into the decision.

“We looked at Vignette, BEA WebLogic, SAP Enterprise Portal 6 and Microsoft SharePoint Portal

Server software, but for scaling up to more than 400,000 users, we needed a robust platform,”

Sonty says. “That’s why we’re betting on IBM as our comprehensive source for infrastructure,

applications and services.”

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BROWARD COUNTY SCHOOLS (continued)Implementing the visionThe deployment of Project Knexus to all stakeholders is planned to occur in four phases, spaced

roughly one year apart.

Phase 1 is the administrative portal. With the pilot project already a success, SBBC is scaling

Project Knexus up to support all administrators.

Phase 2 will tie in teacher, student and parent components.

Phase 3 will add an SAP enterprise resource planning environment for business and opera-

tional applications.

Phase 4 will open Project Knexus to external business partners and the community at large,

where the One Broward program is planned to offer wireless broadband access at no charge.

In imagining the future of Project Knexus, Sonty envisions a time when the whole community will

benefit. “We want to tie libraries, hospitals and other public entities together so members of our

community can leverage the Project Knexus infrastructure to accomplish their daily tasks.”

finding the solution with Project KnexusWhen complete, Project Knexus is planned to provide all classes of users with integrated work

environments that contain role-specific applications, tools and services. Single-sign-on functionality

will help provide simple, secure access. Available services including document and content

management, Web content publishing, search capabilities, e-mail and fax functionality and a rich

array of other tools will help enable collaboration, partnering and learning over the Web.

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BROWARD COUNTY SCHOOLS (continued)“In the educational environment, you have many types of collaborations, such as parent/teacher,

student/teacher and school administration/community interactions,” Sonty says. “IBM On Demand

Workplace for Education suite will provide tools like presence awareness and instant messaging,

Web conferencing, e-learning for students and work environments for team projects, as well as

two-way interactions using IP components of the IT infrastructure. This is exciting because we are

intensifying the focus around each student, which should boost student achievement.”

The On Demand Workplace for Education suite is also planned to offer integrated access to the

Broward County School District’s legacy applications and third-party reporting tools for fast and

easy data retrieval and reporting.

Designed to provide teacher access to the student information system, the virtual classroom and

applications for reading, attendance and reporting as well as a range of collaborative services,

Project Knexus is also planned to provide tools for creating and sharing content, curricula and

lesson plans.

The student view is designed to present a 24x7 digital learning environment. Using a laptop

and a wireless connection, students should be able to access personalized content, schedules,

assignments, textbooks and just-in-time multimedia learning exercises.




BROWARD COUNTY SCHOOLS (continued)SBBC plans to give parents access to school assignments, their child’s calendar, upcoming

school events, child attendance, teacher credentials and information on the child’s performance

as well as access to the same resources as students.

Project Knexus is designed to give administrators access to core services that support SBBC

operations, such as help desk, logistics, purchasing, maintenance, facilities, transportation and

financial applications. On the curriculum side, the portal should help teachers and administra-

tors align lesson plans with government standards and assess educational progress, as required

by the No Child Left Behind Act. Project Knexus is also designed to provide administrators with

access to valuable educational intelligence, helping them discover relationships that remain

hidden when data resides in legacy silos.

“Our data warehouse tracks student information from kindergarten through 12th grade—

proficiencies, test scores, grades and more. With integration, we can tie that to business data

from the SAP environment,” Sonty says. “This enables what-if analysis, such as finding out if

timely equipment and facility repairs impact student performance.”

Seeing positive user feedbackSBBC executives are pleased with the results of the administrative pilot, which has proved the

portal’s viability and ease of implementation.

“Guidance counselors and principals told us that with Project Knexus, data retrieval and compil-

ing that might have taken a week in the past can be performed in minutes, because everything

is in one place,” Sonty says. The pilot successfully integrated applications vital to administrators,




BROWARD COUNTY SCHOOLS (continued)guidance counselors and principals, such as Virtual Counselor, a Web-based tool providing stu-

dent information. Also integrated was the student information system, a green-screen application

made user-friendly via IBM middleware. Principals and administrators now have real-time access

to maintenance details such as open work orders and the value of repairs; previously they had to

visit separate Web sites or make several calls to get the same information.

The pilot project helped prove the advantages of IBM open-standards-based technology.

“System interoperability and openness are critical to us, because they bring our disparate

systems together,” says Sonty. “We are moving to open standards such as the Linux® operating

system, networks using TCP/IP, HTML publishing, programming that is compliant with Java 2

Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology and open integration via service-oriented archi-

tecture. IBM supports all these efforts.” In many cases, IBM On Demand Workplace support

for service-oriented architectures will speed processes through cross-departmental application

integration—such as when purchasing-application components link with financial components

to streamline procurement.

IT executives also like the simplified management of a user environment distributed throughout

the large district. IBM® Workplace Managed Client™ software provides users with a rich client

experience and helps enable centralized, server-managed control of the entire user environ-

ment. Automated deployment, management and upgrades of user desktops, to help keep all

users current with the latest software releases and new applications, help improve student secu-

rity and help reduce the IT staff workload, maximizing return on investment.

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BROWARD COUNTY SCHOOLS (continued)Witnessing an exciting evolutionProject Knexus is an exciting, pioneering step in the application of the IBM On Demand Workplace

for Education suite. It offers students and their support teams a varied palette of digital content,

collaborative tools and resources for 24x7 learning—and experience with a skill set that is critical

to success in the 21st century. Says Sonty, “The IBM On Demand Workplace for Education suite

enables SBBC to achieve improved decision making at reduced cost and with greater respon-

siveness to meet the on demand challenges faced by K–12 schools today.”

for more informationFor more information on IBM On Demand Workplace offerings, please contact your IBM sales

representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit:

ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offerfamily/igs/a1001733

* KNEXUS is a recognized acronym for Knowledge: Networks, Exchange and Uses, and its usage herein is not intended to state or imply affiliation with any company or trademark.

http://www.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offerfamily/igs/a1001733

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DAIMLERCHRYSLEREurope and North America: Automotive

A company steeped in tradition.

ChallengeCreate a highly efficient portal infrastructure

SolutionMake components available via Web services

Key BenefitsWidening the B2B scope through Web services

“We assume there is a huge potential for this technology to help us automate manual processes and better integrate with our partners at justifiable costs.”

—Hans-Juergen Gross, manager of IT methods and technology, DaimlerChrysler




DAIMLERCHRYSLER (continued)In 1998, two companies steeped in tradition—Daimler-Benz AG and Chrysler Corporation—

merged to form DaimlerChrysler. The company is one of the world’s leading automotive, trans-

portation and services companies. Its passenger car brands include Maybach, Mercedes-Benz,

Chrysler, Jeep®, Dodge and Smart. Commercial vehicles are produced under the Mercedes-

Benz, Freightliner, Sterling, Western Star, Setra, Thomas Built Buses, Orion and American

LaFrance brands. In addition to their automotive sales, they offer financial and other services

through DaimlerChrysler Services.

With 372,500 employees and 55 major operational plants around the globe (22 in Europe, 25 in

North America, 5 in South America and 3 in both Africa and Asia), DaimlerChrysler achieved rev-

enues of US$136.1 billion (e152.9 billion) in 2001 through the sales of its products and services

in more than 200 countries. DaimlerChrysler today has a global workforce, a global shareholder

base, global brand awareness and a global outlook. Its strategy, which has positioned the com-

pany well in today’s worldwide economy, relies on four pillars: global presence, strong brands,

broad product range and technology leadership.

A highly efficient portal infrastructureDaimlerChrysler has engaged in a series of portal projects over the last couple of years in order

to provide structured access to the huge amount of data and applications available to customers,

partners and employees. One of the most successful usage scenarios has developed around the

Supplier Portal, serving more than 15,000 individuals from around 7,000 partner corporations.




DAIMLERCHRYSLER (continued)Together with many other portals, the DaimlerChrysler Supplier Portal is an infrastructure

that makes applications from several DaimlerChrysler business units available to users over

the Internet. The portals provide a consistent interface for applications and a unified mecha-

nism to provide authorized access.

The implementation is based on IBM’s proven WebSphere Portal V4.1 software, which pro-

vides key advantages, like single sign-on for supplier users, secure transmission, one-face

appearance to the customer and standardized user management processes.

The applications, which are accessed in a very consistent manner through the portal, are of

course based on a wide range of different technologies, like IBM Lotus Notes, IBM WebSphere

or SAP software. All of the applications require an interface to key components of the portal

infrastructure, like the B2B Info Service.

The B2B Info Service is a function within the DaimlerChrysler Supplier Portals that provides

nondirect access to the (lightweight directory access protocol [LDAP] based) user directory

to enquire about user specific data. Continuous development and new requirements made it

necessary to adapt the current implementation.




DAIMLERCHRYSLER (continued)The new version must be a component that can be easily accessed by multiple, different

requestor applications and meet criteria such as the following:

Performance

Caching

Neutral interface to provide access from multiple sources

Access to one or more (multiple) directories

Adherence to the authorization and authentication scheme that governs user enquiries

Making components available via Web servicesThe original interface for the B2B User Service had been built around an in-house developed

protocol based on XML over HTTP and implemented as a Web application with servlet technol-

ogy. To meet the new requirements, the new interface protocol was chosen to be Web services

enabled in order to provide the flexibility and interoperability needed.

“We wanted to provide a component that could be efficiently accessed from inside and maybe

later on potentially outside our firewall and support a standardized interface available on basi-

cally all application platforms. Web services technology fits these criteria exactly!” says Mr.

Hans-Juergen Gross, manager of IT methods and technology at DaimlerChrysler, Sindelfingen,

in justification of the technology decision.

•

•

•

•

•




DAIMLERCHRYSLER (continued)The Web service developed in this project will be used by all applications integrated in the

DaimlerChrysler Supplier Portal and, perhaps in the future, in other portals too. There are a

substantial number of these applications, all potentially using this service. At this stage the

Web services are only accessible within the DaimlerChrysler intranet.

“IBM has done a lot of research in the area of Web services and successfully completed several

projects utilizing this technology. We hence decided to team with IBM to benefit from their experi-

ence,” explains Mr. Hans-Juergen Gross.

The project was developed in a collaboration between the local DaimlerChrysler team in Stuttgart,

DCCG (DaimlerChrysler Consulting Graz) in Austria and the IBM consultants, with the goal to

mentor the DaimlerChrysler team on Web services technology.

“Through hands-on, onsite training, our engineers were guided by IBM consultants. We quickly

achieved substantial results,” states Mr. Martin Koelbel, lead developer at DaimlerChrysler,

describing the excellent relationship with the IBM team.

The development was done with AXIS tools and IBM WebSphere Application Developer software

for both the Web services provider and the requestor. While the development environment was

based under Microsoft Windows® 2000, the production environment will be under WebSphere V5

software running under UNIX® technology.



DAIMLERCHRYSLER (continued)Client proxy generation with a few mouse clicksBy using Web services, it turned out to be quite easy to create lightweight interfaces. For a com-

pany with heterogeneous systems, it is important to use a technology that can be accessed from

different platforms in a consistent and robust manner and that is easy to handle at the same time.

The advantages for the client, that is, the Web service requestor, are equally attractive. Given the

fact that tools are available today on multiple platforms, the messaging and transportation layer

of the client invocation can be generated virtually by a click of a button. This can be a huge time

saver for the DaimlerChrysler developers.

In several aspects, this project was seen as a pathfinder project on Web services technology.

Given the positive experience, the technology could be applied within B2B applications as a

next step. Most of the current B2B Web applications merely provide a GUI for users. However,

by simply adding a Web services interface, these applications could be expanded to directly

integrate with the back-end systems of the suppliers and vice versa.




DAIMLERCHRYSLER (continued)“We assume there is a huge potential for this technology to help us automate manual processes

and better integrate with our partners at justifiable costs,” says Hans-Juergen Gross, describing

further plans at DaimlerChrysler.

For additional information on DaimlerChrysler Corporation AG, please visit:

dcx.com

Story URL:

ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/cs/khal-62gn35

http://www.dcx.com

http://www.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/cs/khal-62gn35




DISCOvERY COMMUNICATIONSNorth America: Media and entertainment

Discovery Communications unifies working environment with IBM portal and enterprise document management solution.

ChallengeManually managing copious production documents for every TV program, plus the

documents that spell out legal rights of ownership, was not the most efficient method for

creating, reviewing, approving, versioning and accessing these critical documents

Why IBM?IBM Business Partner considered IBM Lotus Domino Document Manager software the

most flexible document management system on the market; Discovery believed in IBM’s

vision and commitment to portal development; superior architecture of IBM WebSphere

Portal software facilitates seamless integration with a wide range of existing applications,

maximizing return on past investments

“Lotus Domino Document Manager software has proved to be the ideal enterprise document management solution, because it features a very straightforward interface that we can access through integration. And WebSphere Portal software enables us to extract more value from the investment we already have in Lotus Domino Document Manager software.”

—Craig Brown, vice president of corporate systems development, Discovery Communications, Inc.




DISCOvERY COMMUNICATIONS (continued)SolutionNew document management solution integrated with portal delivers single-sign-on access

to company’s disparate sources of critical production and legal information and media

content, as well as providing document life-cycle management for creating, reviewing and

approving these documents; thanks to an IBM document management and portal solu-

tion, Discovery Communications is finding it easier to track the numerous documents that

accompany the production of a TV program

Key BenefitsDocument-retrieval processes that used to take weeks now takes seconds

Preserving and making accessible the company’s content assets has made it simple for

employees to obtain the latest version of every document

Library researchers can now focus on high value strategic research projects and queries

•

•

•

“We saw WebSphere Portal software as being exceptionally flexible in terms of the developer’s freedom to integrate other applications into it and build upon it.”

—Craig Brown

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DISCOvERY COMMUNICATIONS (continued)For hundreds of millions of television viewers worldwide, Discovery Communications, Inc. (DCI)

is the leading global real-world media and entertainment company. DCI is the parent company

of Discovery Channel and scores of other network brands in 160 countries and 35 languages, as

well as educational franchises and retail stores. With a flair for presenting the unusual, the com-

pany has been combining education and entertainment since 1985.

Within its far-flung broadcasting empire, however, DCI had to work hard to distribute the

mission-critical material and tools that its 5,000-person global workforce needed to do their

jobs. In particular, managing production life cycles and the documents that spell out legal rights

of ownership—DCI’s lifeblood—was a labor-intensive manual process. Documents were stored

in disparate islands of information rather than centrally, which added time to searches for these

essential production documents.

DCI accumulates, on average, a six-inch stack of production documents for every program it

develops, and the process of creating and accessing these documents was cumbersome and

tedious. The problem also consumed the time of in-house library researchers who ultimately

received requests to find the appropriate document. “We had to increase access and simplify

searches for the information residing in our production documents,” says Craig Brown, vice

president of corporate systems development at DCI. “The solution would have to begin with the

workflow for creating and approving the documents, so that employees could rest assured that

they were dealing with the latest document.”

Key components

SoftwareIBM WebSphere Portal Extend

IBM Lotus Domino Document Manager

•

•

Business PartnersCarefree Technologies

Cobra Technologies

•

•

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DISCOvERY COMMUNICATIONS (continued)Discovery turned to IBM Business Partner Carefree Technologies (Carefree) for a document

management solution that would centralize and streamline the process of document creation,

filing, management and retrieval. Carefree, in turn, recommended IBM Lotus Domino Document

Manager software to alleviate Discovery’s document management headaches. “Lotus Domino

Document Manager software is the most flexible document management product on the market

because of its open application programming interface (API), and because it was designed for

the Internet,” says Bill Plunkett, vice president of sales and marketing, Carefree.

Tuning in to higher productivityTo make it more efficient to provide employees with the data and applications they needed

to function in the worldwide Discovery workplace, the company’s Technology and Media

Services Group began evaluating portal solutions that would aggregate and personalize

information, and make it accessible from a single Web site. No stranger to IBM, DCI had

implemented IBM WebSphere Commerce software to power its highly successful Web store

at www.discoverystore.com. The company evaluated IBM’s portal offering, IBM WebSphere

Portal software, and compared it with the portal product of another leading vendor.




DISCOvERY COMMUNICATIONS (continued)The winning contender was IBM WebSphere Portal Extend software, primarily because of its

superior architecture, according to Brown. “We saw WebSphere Portal software as being excep-

tionally flexible in terms of the developer’s freedom to integrate other applications into it and build

upon it,” says Brown. “In addition, IBM has demonstrated the vision—the long-term commitment

to portal development using both the Lotus and WebSphere product sets. This reassured us that

the product would be available for the long term and allowed us to take advantage of our in-

house IT skill sets.”

DCI has been implementing the new portal in stages. Only six months into the project, the portal

began to act as the central gateway to news, information and tools. Employees are noticing the

difference in their efficiency and productivity. “The WebSphere Portal and Lotus Domino Document

Manager solutions are proving to be a consolidating force within our organization, helping

employees to make better decisions, faster,” says Brown.

Greg Fioravanti, vice president, business affairs buy-in, notes, “Lotus Domino Document Manager

software turned out to be a perfect solution for our document storage challenges. It was extremely

flexible to configure to our existing workflow, integrated well with our other systems, and now

makes critical documents available globally to each user on his or her desktop. This solution has

made a significant contribution to increasing DCI’s productivity.”




DISCOvERY COMMUNICATIONS (continued)Cutting through the clutterCurrently the portal helps employees track and manage the television production process by

providing a portfolio of customized portlets—Java technology-based components that process

transactions and generate dynamic content. Through integration with Lotus Domino Document

Manager software, the portal allows employees to easily find the documents they need. In addi-

tion, employees can utilize a portlet containing useful links to external Web sites and a news

service from LexisNexis to keep abreast of the latest trends in the television industry.

The portal provides the most up-to-date production agreement documents that employees can rely

on. “WebSphere Portal software facilitates integration with a tremendous range of legacy appli-

cations, because it is based on open standards such as XML and Web services,” says Brown.

Extra value from existing investmentsTo integrate the portal with Lotus Domino Document Manager software, DCI leveraged software

from IBM Lotus Premier Business Partner Cobra Technologies, based in Tallahassee, Florida.

The software creates a document index that can be accessed from the portal using a Web ser-

vice containing a unique identification number assigned by WebSphere Portal software for each

document. The Web service finds the latest version of the document and leverages the existing

security around that document provided by Lotus Domino Document Manager software.




DISCOvERY COMMUNICATIONS (continued)“Lotus Domino Document Manager software has proved to be the ideal enterprise document

management solution for use with the portal, because it features a very straightforward interface

that we can access through integration,” says Brown. “And WebSphere Portal software enables

us to extract more value from the investment we already have in Lotus Domino Document

Manager software.”

further portal enrichmentsDCI has begun to enhance its portal by integrating it with its SAP solution. Another development

track involves furthering the integration of the IBM® Workplace Team Collaboration™ solution with

the portal. “One of the best improvements in WebSphere Portal, Version 5 software is the integra-

tion with Workplace Team Collaboration software, and we intend to take advantage of that in the

future,” says Brown. “We also want to enrich the portal with elements from IBM Lotus Sametime®

software to raise our productivity even more.”

With IBM providing further enhancements through development of WebSphere Portal software,

Brown looks forward to improving DCI’s online working environment well into the future. “Through

continued development of its WebSphere and Lotus products, IBM is committed to helping us

thrive by making information available anytime, anywhere, on demand.”



DISCOvERY COMMUNICATIONS (continued)for more informationPlease contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit us at:

ibm.com/websphere/portal

or

ibm.com/lotus

For more information on Discovery Communications, Inc., visit:

discovery.com

For more information on Cobra Technologies, Inc. and Carefree Technologies, Inc., visit:

cobratech.com

and

carefreetech.com

http://www.ibm.com/websphere/portal

http://www.ibm.com/lotus

http://www.discovery.com

http://www.cobratech.com

http://www.carefreetech.com




EICHERAsia: Automotive

Eicher boosts productivity and responsiveness with collaborative IBM portal.

ChallengeEicher needed to overcome cumbersome processes and limited access to information that

kept employees from excelling at their jobs

Why Become an On Demand Business?Eicher strove to raise productivity and be more responsive to employees’ needs by

automating administrative processes and providing real-time access to mission-

critical information

SolutionEPIC, an integrated employee portal and collaboration platform, enables Eicher to

enhance collaboration, productivity and knowledge

Key BenefitsShortened turnaround times for key HR processes; increased productivity; lowered admin-

istration costs; increased employee satisfaction

“We were wasting resources on cumbersome, high-overhead procedures. Without a fundamental change in our business processes, these problems threatened to affect our sales results, market share and, ultimately, profits.”

—Sanjay Govil, director and CIO, Eicher




EICHER (continued) Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the Eicher group of companies (www.eicherworld.

com) is a frontline player in the global automotive engineering business. With revenues

exceeding US$300 million (INR13 billion) and more than 5,000 employees worldwide,

its diversified interests include design, development, production and marketing of trac-

tors, commercial vehicles, motorcycles and automotive components. It also has interests

in management consulting, cartography and geographic information systems, and engi-

neering services.

For many years, Eicher has supported its business objectives with sophisticated IT pro-

cesses, making its human resources (HR) functions smooth and efficient for back-end

administrators. However, the processes were far less efficient for the company’s staff.

Most employees had limited access to the automated system. Performing HR-related

activities meant filling out numerous paper forms, routing them to multiple managers for

review and signature, and sending the signed and countersigned sheets to the appropri-

ate department—often hundreds of miles away. Employees had no easy way to check the

status of an expense reimbursement claim, request training, clarify a salary issue, request

a sick day or vacation time—even report a change in marital status. “Chasing after simple

requests was keeping our employees from doing their jobs,” says Sanjay Govil, director

and CIO at Eicher.

“Our Lotus software-based collaborative portal has brought us a spirit of efficient, productive, down-to-business collaboration that you can feel in the halls of every Eicher factory and business office.”

—Sanjay Govil




EICHER (continued)Manual HR processes were not the only problem. Employees could not easily consult the manu-

facturing documentation, company procedures or quality standards that governed their work,

because that information was not housed in a central location. With no convenient collaboration

forum or corporate information repository, workgroups duplicated efforts. And company pro-

cesses needed to be periodically reviewed at staff meetings. All of this was causing a tremendous

loss in productivity and much dissatisfaction among employees.

“We were wasting resources on cumbersome, high-overhead, paper-based procedures. Without

a fundamental change in our business processes, these problems threatened to affect our sales

results, market share and, ultimately, profits,” Govil says.

Building agility through instant information accessTo avoid hindering its business growth, Eicher needed to become more responsive to its employ-

ees by replacing its unwieldy, paper-based HR processes with an efficient, cost-effective,

automated solution. The new HR solution would enable staff members to draft a broad range

of requests electronically, automatically route them for approval and processing, and track their

progress. It would also eliminate redundant data-entry tasks, and the need for employees to

chase down paper forms and conduct time-consuming follow-ups for approval. “To compete

globally, we needed to cut costs, boost revenues and focus on delivering quality products and

services—and that required streamlining our business processes,” says Govil.

On Demand Business benefits

Turnaround times for key HR processes reduced by up to 40 percent

Seventy-five percent of staff report increases in productivity by eliminating time-consuming, distracting paper-based processes

Speeds payments to sub-contractors

Considerable reduction in data-entry errors and admin-istrative costs by minimizing the need for telephone follow-ups, printed forms and manual data entry

Rise in employee satisfac-tion due to quick, efficient resolution of workers’ HR issues

Projected improvements in company performance

Ease of integration with legacy SAP system based on open-standards solution

•

•

•

•

•

•

•




EICHER (continued)The company also needed to provide employees with a single, easily accessible source for what-

ever information was most critical to their specific jobs—and a collaboration mechanism to drive

greater internal efficiencies and deliver best-in-class customer service. “In short, the only way

to respond with agility to the demands of the marketplace and our customers was to keep our

employees focused on the job,” notes Govil. “To do that, we needed to provide them with instant

access to crucial, group-specific information and to each other’s ideas.”

Developing productivity through collaborationTo achieve these objectives, Eicher decided to create and implement EPIC (Eicher Portal for

Information and Collaboration), a company-wide employee portal that is connected to the core

SAP HR system and other business processes.

The automotive engineering company worked with IBM Business Partner Pre-emptive Systems

(P) Ltd. (Pre-emptive) to deploy the solution to provide staff with real-time access to enterprise

information and HR processes, enhancing collaboration, productivity and knowledge.

Now, employees instantly initiate and track a broad range of business processes related to their

performance management, travel arrangements, vacation and sick leave, benefits and expense

accounts—all without leaving their desks or picking up the phone. Back-office staff are relieved

of the burden of reading, interpreting and rekeying handwritten requests, correcting errors and

Key components

SoftwareIBM Lotus Domino R6

IBM Lotus Domino Enterprise Server

IBM Lotus Domino Designer

IBM Lotus Sametime

IBM Lotus Web Conferencing

IBM Lotus Notes

•

•

•

•

•

•

ServerIBM ^ xSeries•

Business PartnerPre-emptive Systems (P) Ltd.

•

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EICHER (continued)conducting lengthy follow-ups by phone, and can focus on quickly and productively process-

ing HR issues as they arise. Says Govil, “Our portal solution is saving us considerable time and

minimizing errors, enabling our employees to keep their focus on strategic issues rather than on

administrative activities.”

Employees at any Eicher location on the company’s wide-area network—including offices in

India, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa and the Middle East—access EPIC

from the corporate intranet. Using standard Web browsers running on their desktop computers—

most of which are Intel® processor-based IBM systems—the solution displays a personalized

home page for each user. From there, users can choose from an array of HR and other internal

processes, access a series of document libraries specific to their workgroups, read messages

from company executives, enroll in specialized training programs, or collaborate using team

rooms, chat spaces and virtual whiteboard facilities.

The EPIC solution provides employees with a repository of current corporate information and

access to specialized documents relevant to their specific workgroups, including production

standards and departmental work schedules. Additionally, the portal delivers extensive col-

laboration and communication functionality, enabling employees to quickly discover if specific

colleagues are available to exchange ideas, correspond quickly through instant messaging

capabilities, meet in groups using Web conferencing or participate in ongoing discussion threads

using virtual bulletin boards. With a relevant store of knowledge to draw from, employees can work

intelligently and efficiently to design and produce better products that satisfy market demands.

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EICHER (continued)Alliances with top vendors add valueEPIC is a customized solution based on Pre-emptive’s Augment™, an architectural framework for

building and managing corporate intranets for effective employee relationship management and

business process automation. It provides integrated, secure, browser-based access to enterprise

information and business processes to enhance collaboration, productivity and knowledge by

leveraging IBM Lotus Domino Web Access software.

A joint team from Eicher and Pre-emptive designed, developed and deployed EPIC in just

three months, using IBM Lotus Domino Designer software, a development tool for collaborative

Web-based applications. IBM Lotus Domino software delivers the applications using open-

standards-based Java technology. The solution runs on robust IBM ^ xSeries® server,

using IBM Lotus Domino Enterprise Server software to provide clustering services to support

uninterrupted access and maximum performance.

Pre-emptive used its own workflow engine (also developed using Lotus Notes software) to design

custom applications facilitating about 30 individual HR processes, defining business logic and a

participant list for each process. Underlying data resides in IBM Lotus Domino databases on the

xSeries servers. IBM Lotus Web Conferencing and IBM Lotus Sametime software provide real-

time collaborative functionality. Eventually, IBM Lotus Notes software will deliver enterprise-wide

messaging and office automation, replacing Eicher’s previous Microsoft Exchange e-mail and

scheduling platform. The solution uses the open standard XML to integrate with the company’s

central SAP R/3 system, which manages its HR and other business processes.




EICHER (continued)“We evaluated several vendors and applications for our portal solution, including BroadVision

and Microsoft,” Govil says. “But as in the past, we found that IBM offered the best solution to

meet the requirements of our enterprise, as well as unparalleled technological expertise and

industry experience. Compared to Microsoft Exchange, our Lotus solutions offer stronger collab-

orative functionality, enabling us to develop and deploy such capabilities quickly. And products

such as Lotus Sametime software bring employees in our distributed organization closer by

enabling them to have impromptu chats online, making it much faster and more efficient for them

to collaborate or share their knowledge.”

Another deciding factor, adds Govil, was IBM’s worldwide network of Business Partners. “IBM

has teamed with front-runners that provide unique value, complementing its own leading-edge

solutions with specialized technologies and know-how,” Govil notes. “When we needed a partner

to help develop our portal, IBM gave us a list of top-notch vendors. We selected Pre-emptive for

the flexibility, scalability and functional elegance of its Lotus software-based solution.”

According to Sanjaya Kumar Saxena, Pre-emptive’s chief executive officer, Lotus software from

IBM has enabled the systems integrator to offer its customers a highly extensible and customiz-

able On Demand Business solution. “We chose Lotus Domino software as the foundation for our

offering because of its unmatched flexibility for developing powerful, scalable collaborative On

Demand Business solutions,” he says. “Thanks to its extensive use of open standards, such as

XML and Java Server Pages, it integrates easily with our customers’ existing infrastructure while

giving them the confidence that future additions to their environment will integrate just as easily.”

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EICHER (continued)From team spirit to bottom-line resultsEPIC has only been live a short time, and already the solution has garnered impressive benefits,

notes Govil. “Turnaround times for most HR processes have been slashed by up to 40 percent,”

he says. “EPIC’s automated workflows and seamless integration with SAP have reduced data-

entry duplication and errors considerably.” According to recent employee polls, 75 percent of

the company’s workforce has reported an increase in their productivity due to the collaboration

portal, and general staff satisfaction has risen. “Administrative costs have been cut significantly

and we’re able to pay subcontractors faster,” Govil says.

But the greatest gain, Govil says, is not as easy to quantify. “Our Lotus software-based collab-

orative portal has brought us a spirit of efficient, productive, down-to-business collaboration that

you can feel in the halls of every Eicher factory and business office,” he says. “That change may

not quite be measurable today, but I have little doubt it is already reflected in the responsiveness

and service excellence we deliver to our clientele. That, in turn, will show up as numbers in our

annual reports.”

For more informationPlease contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit us at:

ibm.com/ondemand

http://www.ibm.com/ondemand




ELEKTRA COMERCIALNorth America: Retail

Elektra empowers employees to respond dynamically to opportunities.

ChallengeProvide real-time sales data to employees to enable dynamic, responsive decision making

Why Become an On Demand Business?By providing real-time sales information to all of its divisions, Elektra believed it could cap-

ture more profitable opportunities and make its operations more efficient

SolutionCentralizing store sales data and integrating it with back-end systems at warehouses and

business centers

Key BenefitsEmployees are more responsive and productive, and make better decisions; with the help

of IBM Global Services, the first stage of the application rolled out to 73 offices in just three

months; entire rollout to 900 stores took only an additional two and one-half months

“Our company was losing the opportunity to increase revenue because of the time it took to get sales data to all the employees who needed it. We had to make deep-seated changes in the way we distributed and processed information.”

—Juan Arevalo, assistant director, Banca Azteca (Elektra’s in-house bank)




ELEKTRA COMERCIAL (continued) What can happen in a day? Enormous modern retail chains sell millions of items in a day

and collect billions of dollars in payments. In just as short a time, promotions can succeed

or fail depending on whether customers buy according to projections.

Timing is extremely important in the retail industry, and it’s no less critical to Mexico City-

based retail chain Elektra Comercial (Elektra). A subsidiary of Grupo Elektra, the company

operates a network of retail stores throughout Mexico and Central America, selling elec-

tronics, furniture and appliances. Approximately 20,000 employees staff its 900 retail

stores, 73 business offices and four warehouses.

Elektra Comercial has become a more agile competitor in the fast-moving Mexican retail

market by rebuilding its IT infrastructure with IBM software and servers.

Elektra (www.elektra.com.mx) depends on time-sensitive online information to make deci-

sions about everything from extending customer credit to deciding what product to feature

in a local in-store promotion. But with an antiquated information-processing system, the

company could not update sales information more frequently than every 24 hours. “That

was simply too late,” says Juan Arevalo, previously director of development for Grupo

Elektra and now assistant director of Banca Azteca, its in-house bank. “Our company was

losing the opportunity to increase revenue because of the time it took to get sales data to

all the employees who needed it.”

“Thanks to the On Demand Business solution from IBM, we now have the tools at hand to immediately process information and respond. That’s support that will enable us to succeed.”

—Juan Arevalo




ELEKTRA COMERCIAL (continued) For many years, Elektra had used a batch-based information distribution system to transmit

point-of-sale (POS) data to its remote warehouses and business centers. The system updated

sales figures every day with the previous day’s results. Elektra knew it needed to become more

responsive to its buyers, financial planners and marketing staff in order to help them deal with

competition, fluctuating currency values, wholesale prices and other environmental factors as

they arose. “We needed the ability to sense the smallest change inside or outside our enterprise,

and respond to it in real time—not the next day,” Arevalo recalls. “Our marketing planners needed

to pick winning products and immediately substitute them for losing ones.

“Buyers needed to respond quickly to new product announcements, snapping up the most favor-

able terms. Customers wanted to pay off credit in the store and immediately make purchases.

And warehouse employees had to know when a refrigerator was sold in order to replenish the

item in time for another sale. To continue to thrive, we had to make deep-seated changes in the

way we distributed and processed information. Elektra would have to streamline its business

processes and integrate them across the entire organization.”

Enterprise integration for real-time informationTo achieve real-time responsiveness, Elektra implemented an enterprise-wide integration solu-

tion from IBM. The new solution enables employees working in Elektra’s marketing, financial and

warehouse departments to go to the business systems they are already familiar with and find

dynamically updated information that can be used for immediate decision making. Since they


More productive employ-ees, who can improve the company’s bottom-line performance

Propagation of real-time sales information to all units of the company to quickly respond to marketing trends and customer needs

Ability to respond instantly to changing business needs, minimizing losses and maxi-mizing value of sales and purchasing opportunities

Open, standards-based integration solution indepen-dent of proprietary systems to maximize usability of investment

Reliable solution equipped with backup and restore functionalities to protect data and availability

•

•

•

•

•




ELEKTRA COMERCIAL (continued) do not have to wait 24 hours for the previous day’s sales figures, employees can issue credit in

real time, raise or lower prices, replenish inventory and, in general, make the numerous minute

adjustments to operations that are necessary for astute retail management.

The solution integrates sales and other POS data with Elektra’s back-end systems, which include

retail handling and distribution systems, and financial solutions. New proprietary, Web-based

applications such as credit card verification, employee performance evaluation, e-mail and

budget reporting are designed to make the most effective use of the new real-time information

flow to maximize revenues and profits.

Transforming processes across the chainElektra’s strategic integration solution has enhanced its employees’ ability to directly affect

company performance by responding to business needs instantly. As a result, the company’s

management and staff in thousands of positions can make immediate decisions and func-

tion in a more productive manner. The company will be able to easily expand the solution as

circumstances dictate, enabling it to instantly integrate and promulgate additional information

throughout the enterprise wherever it is needed.

Using software, hardware and consulting services from IBM and IBM Business Partner GT

Consulting, a customer today can buy a television from a store in Cuernavaca, and marketing

executives, warehouse employees and accountants all know about it immediately. “IBM helped

Key components

SoftwareIBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, Version 5

IBM WebSphere Portal Express, Version 4.1

IBM WebSphere MQ, Versions 5.1 and 5.2

IBM WebSphere MQ Integrator, Version 2.0

IBM WebSphere Edge Server

IBM DB2 Universal Database for iSeries

IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Business Integration

IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Enterprise Edition

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

ServersIBM ^ iSeries 840 and 820

IBM UNIX processor based server

•

•

ServicesIBM Global Financing

IBM Global Services

•

•

Business PartnerGT Consulting•




ELEKTRA COMERCIAL (continued) us transform our business processes, not just fix a problem for today or tomorrow,” says Juan

Arevalo. “IBM provided solutions to run pilot tests, try various scenarios, find the best solution to

make our business grow and, once the business does grow, incorporate new technology.”

Responsive, low total-cost-of-ownership solutionElektra’s business applications—as well as the company’s JDA retail handling and distribution

systems and SAP financial solutions—are accessible through a common interface managed

by IBM WebSphere Portal Express software. WebSphere Portal software delivers a single,

integrated, customizable universal point of access so Elektra’s employees can interact with the

business processes they are authorized to use. Elektra’s scalable front-end platform is supported

by back-end integration that channels all processes into a central database.

The integration solution is based on industry-standard IBM WebSphere MQ messaging technol-

ogy. To centralize data from POS systems onto IBM DB2® Universal Database™ software, IBM

WebSphere MQ and IBM WebSphere MQ Integrator software run on Intel processor-based serv-

ers at the 900 store locations, formatting and sending asynchronous messages to DB2 Universal

Database software on centralized IBM ^ iSeries 840 and 820 systems. On the iSeries

servers, WebSphere Application Server software manages Java Server Pages and servlets,

retrieving data from DB2 Universal Database software and accessing WebSphere MQ Integrator

and WebSphere MQ software to communicate with back-end applications.




ELEKTRA COMERCIAL (continued) The system affects every department in the company and supports over 2,000 users. “WebSphere

MQ Integrator software has enabled us to save significant investment costs by leveraging our exist-

ing database and line-of-business server infrastructure and by drastically reducing the number

of connections required for our solution,” Arevalo notes. “This in turn has lowered our total cost of

ownership (TOC) and enabled faster implementation, which will increase our return on investment.”

Within the solution, IBM WebSphere Edge Server software enhances caching and offloads content

and processing to increase availability. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager software on a UNIX processor-

based IBM server performs automated backup and restore operations to protect data assets in

the event of unforeseen data losses. IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Business Integration software pro-

vides system-level monitoring of the components to ensure maximum throughput. And IBM Tivoli

Enterprise Console® software helps to improve system performance and reduce support costs by

showing the root cause of system failures.

Opting for IBM resources and open technologyA longtime iSeries customer, Elektra found the IBM proposal appealing because it was a single

solution backed by resources that could comprehensively meet Elektra’s needs. “We chose

the WebSphere application server and messaging solution over BEA WebLogic because

WebSphere software is an open platform—more adaptable than the competition, less dependent

on proprietary hardware,” says Arevalo.

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ELEKTRA COMERCIAL (continued) IBM provided a comprehensive range of services to facilitate the project. For instance, to reduce

up-front costs and minimize the debt load, Elektra used IBM Global Financing. With the help of

IBM Global Services, moreover, the rollout of the first stage of the application to 73 offices took

just three months. And with support from IBM Business Partner GT Consulting, which assisted in

application development and deployment, the entire rollout to 900 stores took only an additional

two and one-half months.

Built-in plan for successAccording to Arevalo, the IBM solution is “the big wheel that runs the company.” And the benefits

are dramatic in terms of increased productivity and efficiency.

With its current IBM solution, Elektra is well equipped to meet whatever challenges the future

may bring. “In this economy, no one can be sure what changes are coming,” says Arevalo. “But

thanks to the On Demand Business solution from IBM, we now have the tools at hand to immedi-

ately process information and respond. That’s support that will enable us to succeed.”

61 BACK NEXT HOME


ELEKTRA COMERCIAL (continued) For more informationPlease contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit us at:

ibm.com/ondemand





GEMEENTE TWENTERANDEurope: Government

Gemeente Twenterand improves performance with IBM.

ChallengeMerge two municipal authorities’ IT systems, manage the enlarged information require-

ments from the same budget, enable new SAP applications for the future

SolutionConsolidate to IBM ^ iSeries Model 810 server, use logical partitioning to provide

legacy support, multiple Lotus Notes servers and support for new SAP solutions

Key BenefitsImproved system performance, reduced maintenance costs, new SAP application support

for the future, within the same monthly budget

“Twenterand was the first local authority in the Netherlands to consolidate to iSeries technology and use LPAR, and we have reaped the benefits. The new iSeries server is a wonderful machine.”

—Jan Bosch, IT manager, Gemeente Twenterand




GEMEENTE TWENTERAND (continued)Two towns in oneGemeente Twenterand (www.twenterand.nl) is a new municipal authority, the result of a merger

in 2001 of Vriezenveen and the City of den Ham in the province of Overijssel, the Netherlands.

The combination of the two authorities is part of the reorganization of Dutch local government,

designed to reduce costs, and part of those savings is planned to come from the reduction in IT

infrastructure and the delivery of more services through e-government initiatives.

The two former authorities were each using IBM AS/400 systems, supporting around 200 users

in total for Lotus Notes and traditional applications. The two AS/400 systems were financed

through IBM leasing and service contracts, which coincidentally were both due to terminate

during 2001. The challenge was to provide the new Gemeente Twenterand with all the applica-

tions of the two former authorities, be ready to implement SAP solutions and be ready to meet

upcoming e-government plans—all for the same budget.

Jan Bosch, IT manager at Gemeente Twenterand explains, “We had our own AS/400 local gov-

ernment applications from software house PinkRoccade, plans to implement SAP—which would

require a new server—and the need to combine the Lotus Notes servers used for calendaring

and e-mail. Given the fixed monthly budget, this was quite a headache.”




GEMEENTE TWENTERAND (continued)Consolidating for power and flexibilityWorking with IBM, Bosch realized that by consolidating to a single new IBM ^ iSeries

Model 810 server using logical partition (LPAR) technology, he could meet all of his requirements.

The two existing AS/400 Lotus Notes servers and the PinkRoccade legacy applications would each

have their own LPAR, and a new LPAR would be created for the forthcoming SAP applications.

Switching to a single i810 system helped reduce the physical footprint and maintenance require-

ments, and with the LPAR solution there was no need to buy an additional machine to support

the SAP solution. And by consolidating to a single system, the Gemeente Twenterand IT depart-

ment was able to deliver its services with just three full-time and one part-time IT support person.

Bosch comments, “We knew it would not be possible to increase the budget, and with the same

people we are now able to serve twice the number of users. With iSeries technology we are able

to plan for our SAP solution in a new partition without the need for an additional machine, too.

Twenterand was the first local authority in the Netherlands to consolidate to iSeries technology

and use LPAR, and we have reaped the benefits. The new iSeries server is a wonderful machine.”

The original plan for configuration and implementation included 10 days’ work; in the event, it

took just 3 days—a pleasant surprise for Bosch. “We had to speak with PinkRoccade about

implementation: the iSeries LPARs were so easy to configure that we over-budgeted, and it’s

not often you have a conversation like this!”




GEMEENTE TWENTERAND (continued)Meeting demanding budget needsThe two former local authorities had leased their AS/400 systems, and these leases both expired

during 2001. Implementing the new i810 while running the older systems would mean running

three leases concurrently, which the financial department of Gemeente Twenterand ruled out.

Bosch asked IBM Global Financing what could be done; the answer was a financial package that

allowed Gemeente Twenterand to pay the same monthly fee even while there were three leases

running, solving the budgetary problems and ensuring that the new system could be installed,

configured and commissioned as planned.

“IBM Global Financing gave us the flexibility to implement the new iSeries system while having

no impact on our budget. For us, an i810 is a big investment, and the solution from IBM Global

Financing has allowed us to achieve improved service levels and a strategy for the future at no

additional monthly cost,” says Bosch.

Planning for SAP on iSeries technologyThere are already plans at Gemeente Twenterand to exploit the iSeries 810 server’s capabilities.

The next version of Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino software is already on the cards, and SAP

implementation is under way.



GEMEENTE TWENTERAND (continued)“The low total cost of ownership of the iSeries system is so important to us. We were able to keep

personnel costs low, and removed the need for additional physical machines with the LPAR

solution. Consolidating to iSeries technology has given us power and flexibility, and we are very

pleased with the results,” concludes Bosch.

Gemeente Twenterand will be receiving certain benefits from IBM (such as IBM education credits

or participation in certain IBM programs) in connection with Gemeente Twenterand’s participa-

tion in the IBM Reference Rewards Program and this Customer Success Story.




KEMPCHEN DICHTUNGSTECHNIKEurope: Manufacturing

first in Germany: Kempchen implements SAP Business One on IBM DB� Universal Database Express.

ChallengeConnecting the ERP, CRM and groupware systems of the distribution subsidiary company

to the central system; long-term integration of the IT systems of all subsidiary companies

SolutionSAP Business One application; IBM ^ xSeries models 345 and 335 servers; IBM

DB2 Universal Database Express Edition software; Lotus Domino services from WP Data

Kommunikations GmbH

Key BenefitsData administration only in central system; automatic order generation and automatic

triggering of production on incoming order from one of the sales subsidiaries or the

electronic marketplaces

“The outstanding price-performance ratio of DB2 Universal Database Express software, the excellent performance and the cost savings offered by the IBM database were the reasons why we decided to use SAP Business One with IBM DB2 Universal Database Express software.”

—Klaus Schonebeck, CEO, Kempchen Dichtungstechnik GmbH




KEMPCHEN DICHTUNGSTECHNIK (continued)Kempchen Dichtungstechnik GmbH, with about 350 employees, is one of the largest

vendors of gaskets, packings and compressors to the chemical industry, refineries,

metalworking industry and power suppliers.

Over 600,000 different products are manufactured at its headquarters in Oberhausen,

Germany, and at four additional sites. The company exports 20 percent of its products to

over 60 countries worldwide. Sales are managed at all five sites and by two special distri-

bution subsidiary companies in Leuna and Schwedt, Germany.

Consolidation, but how?Since the IT systems of the subsidiary companies are only partially integrated into the

central system in Oberhausen, consolidating and integrating IT systems was indispens-

able, especially for enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. This system is a highly

specialized application running with DB2 software on IBM iSeries servers and is directly

connected to major electronic marketplaces. As of today, it already processes 10 percent

of the turnover, with an upward trend for the future.

That was the main reason behind the choice of an outside-in consolidation; as a pilot proj-

ect, the subsidiary Kempchen-Leuna needed to be equipped with an ERP system that was

based on DB2 software and compatible with the central system.

“The xSeries server is incredibly reliable and very capable—just perfect for hosting databases!”





KEMPCHEN DICHTUNGSTECHNIK (continued)Waiting for the right productAt CeBIT 2003, SAP announced its decision to make its midsize company solution SAP

Business One available for DB2 Universal Database Express software, a version of the

database management system DB2 software that was adapted to suit the needs of midsize

businesses. These two products are a perfect combination in terms of TCO, scalability and

user friendliness.

from demonstration to decisionA year later at CeBIT 2004, SAP presented a preliminary version, and Kempchen project

leaders were so impressed that they signed the project contract at the exhibition itself.

Klaus Schonebeck, CEO of Kempchen Dichtungstechnik GmbH, says, “The fact that SAP

Business One now supports IBM DB2 software was the crucial factor in our decision.”

Hardware issues were not even addressed, because the choice was obvious right from the

start: Kempchen has had 10 years’ very successful experience of using IBM hardware and

believes in the technology.

That is why only IBM xSeries technology was considered for the new Intel processor-based

applications. “The xSeries server,” adds Schonebeck, “is incredibly reliable and very

capable—just perfect for hosting databases!” Three IBM ^ xSeries model 345 and

two IBM ^ xSeries model 335 servers were being installed for SAP Business One,

DB2 Universal Database Express and further supportive systems.

“The pilot installation went smoothly and successfully. Now we can start the rollout of SAP Business One with IBM DB2 Universal Database Express software at four other sites.”


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KEMPCHEN DICHTUNGSTECHNIK (continued)Partnership helps quick decision makingThe decision to implement this solution was an easy one to make, given Kempchen Dichtungstech-

nik GmbH’s solid relationship with both DB2 software and WP Data Kommunikations GmbH, an

IBM Business Partner. WP Data has been supporting Kempchen’s IT decisions for over 12 years to

the company’s complete satisfaction.

The gasket technology manufacturer relies on the fact that WP Data tests and optimizes all of

its new solutions in advance, which built an expectation that the system would work without any

start-up problems; every expectation was met. IBM supported WP Data with a prototype solution

at the IBM SAP International Competence Center (ISICC) in Walldorf, Germany, helping to test

the solution and tailoring it to the customer’s needs.

When SAP Business One for DB2 Universal Database Express software was released in

December 2004, the project work in Leuna could start, with the preparatory work already done.

The implementation took only a few weeks and the new system has been in production since

February 2005.

Double benefit: the Lotus Domino platformOn a related, completed project, Lotus Domino software replaced the groupware platform of

another supplier, because it is more scalable, secure, stable and, most important, has higher

integration potential. The new solution allows the introduction of a new customer relationship

management (CRM) system—developed by WP Data—on Lotus Domino and DB2 software.

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KEMPCHEN DICHTUNGSTECHNIK (continued)It was even more interesting to change the systems to SAP Business One and DB2 Universal

Database Express software, because the applications can develop all of their potential in this

new environment. “One benefit brought another benefit,” says Steffen Paulussen, CEO of WP

Data, “and that ultimately is a result of the openness and flexibility of SAP Business One and the

integration capabilities of Lotus Domino software.”

The two existing Lotus Domino layers for groupware and CRM were extended by another layer,

linking the central ERP system in Oberhausen with the CRM applications, integrating the legacy

ERP systems at the other sites, and the SAP Business One application from Leuna. The solid

standardized interfaces SAP Business One offers allow communication to work seamlessly. The

new Lotus Domino layer deals with master data distribution and replication between the different

applications and sites.

Making business processes easierThe close interaction between the ERP and CRM processes in Oberhausen and Leuna has had

a direct positive impact on a number of business processes.

Product data is exclusively processed at the central site, where the data is automatically pro-

vided to the distribution company. Bookings and orders from Leuna are automatically handled by

the central system in Oberhausen, updating the corresponding CRM data items. A further advan-

tage is that Kempchen-Leuna is now also linked to the electronic marketplaces via Oberhausen,

and can contribute to the expansion of this distribution channel.



KEMPCHEN DICHTUNGSTECHNIK (continued)“By introducing SAP Business One in our site in Leuna, we are now able to react flexibly and

quickly to changing demands in our market. In particular, we are very happy with the intuitive han-

dling of the system and the short implementation time,” says Klaus Schonebeck. “Our employees

in Leuna are very enthusiastic about SAP Business One in terms of user friendliness, too.”

What next?The integration of Kempchen-Leuna’s ERP and CRM applications into head office systems are

just the beginning of a long consolidation strategy. The next steps involve the integration of four

other subsidiary companies in the same way. “The pilot installation went smoothly and success-

fully,” Klaus Schonebeck is happy to say. “Now we can start the rollout of SAP Business One with

IBM DB2 Universal Database Express software at four other sites.”

Because the technical rollout can be executed quickly, with an average of 1.7 man-days per

Kempchen employee, it is scheduled to be complete by 2006/2007, replacing the current ERP

applications in Oberhausen with an up-to-date mySAP ERP system that will be even more effi-

cient in integrating the existing SAP Business One systems.

Such a large project on such a time scale is only possible thanks to a long-lasting partnership

between Kempchen Dichtungstechnik GmbH and WP Data. This partnership is based on a pro-

found knowledge of the industry, business processes and deep mutual trust.




M.J. MAILLIS GROUPNorth America: Manufacturing

M.J. Maillis Group: Integrated ERP synchronizes manufacturing, sales and distribution.

ChallengeM.J. Maillis Group wanted to standardize its ERP application and implement more cohe-

sive business processes to synchronize operations and enable the company to be more

responsive to market shifts and customer needs

SolutionIBM Business Consulting Services developed the business strategy and helped

implement a new ERP system to transform the group’s highly decentralized operating

environment into a more centralized, flexible, responsive and resilient work environment;

the strategy work was aimed at improving the group’s business continuity

Key BenefitsThe solution reduced the group’s array of administrative sites due to various acquisitions

into a single one, which allows a better controlled, more reliable and cost-effective busi-

ness administration

“The array of implementation innovation provided by IBM, in particular from an administrator’s point of view, allowed us to centralize our administrative operations into a single site, and at the same time, we have easy-to-monitor procedures of daily tasks, which adds to the group’s reliability and increase of productivity.”

—John Kasolis, general administrator, IT department, M.J. Maillis Group




M.J. MAILLIS GROUP (continued)About the companyM.J. Maillis Group has been involved in manufacturing and distributing end-of-line industrial

solutions including strapping, wrap and tape packaging material, strapping tools and machines,

shrink-wrap and carton sealing machines, and special bands, since 1968. The company offers

complete solutions for both the heavy-duty and light packaging markets for all industrial appli-

cations. The Maillis Group operates in more than 52 countries through a network of 30 owned

affiliate companies and more than 350 independent distributors. The Group is now expanding its

manufacturing units in Spain, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Poland, Romania and Canada.

M.J. Maillis Group increased business control, reliability and productivity with a centralized,

integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution implemented by IBM Business Consulting

Services as part of an overall business strategy that the team helped the company develop.

Business needM.J. Maillis Group wanted to standardize its ERP application and implement more cohesive busi-

ness processes to synchronize operations and enable the company to be more responsive to

market shifts and customer needs.




M.J. MAILLIS GROUP (continued)Key challengesThe group had expanded its holdings and distribution facilities through a variety of acquisitions

and strategic alliances. The business has grown piecemeal with the various added locations and

affiliates. As a result, each division had its own separate administrative solutions and processes.

The company lacked a standard, centralized approach to production planning and tracking,

which made it difficult to synchronize manufacturing to sales and distribution.

Solution: IBM Business Consulting ServicesIBM Business Consulting Services developed the business strategy and helped implement a

new ERP system to transform the group’s highly decentralized operating environment into a more

centralized, flexible, responsive and resilient work environment. The strategy work was aimed at

improving the group’s business continuity. This, coupled with the implemented SAP R/3 system

will increase productivity and the quality of service offered to the company’s customers.

IBM provided the group with an On Demand Business solution to automatically integrate a

broad range of multinational business processes under a central ERP system. Using an SAP R/3

system with accompanying software, the company is able to seamlessly integrate information

from various locations’ systems in a variety of languages into a central database.




M.J. MAILLIS GROUP (continued)In addition, IBM delivered an innovative software solution that allows the database to self-

configure in order to retain a high degree of responsiveness and resilience under heavy loads.

A novel reporting subsystem has also been delivered, which sends the group’s general admin-

istrator database modifications and database monitoring results via e-mail, so that the IT group

administrator has easy access to a concise report of the database activities. Additional software

automates a variety of SAP R/3 administration procedures, including migrating business objects

and data from other SAP R/3 systems to the main database. As well, the software migrates entire

R/3 systems called homogeneous R/3 system copies. Such software allows the company to

independently perform important SAP R/3 administrative operations in-house and centralized at

a single location.

The group wanted to use the SAP R/3 system as its primary work environment. It was critical

to the company that IBM integrate the company’s Lotus Notes v6.5 software with the SAP R/3

e-mail subsystem. Invoices created in SAP R/3 at any site can be delivered directly and trans-

parently from an SAP graphical user interface, although Lotus Notes software has actually been

posting them to the outside world.



M.J. MAILLIS GROUP (continued)ResultsThe solution reduced the group’s array of administrative sites due to various acquisitions

into a single one, which allows a better controlled, more reliable and cost-effective business

administration. “The array of implementation innovation provided by IBM, in particular from an

administrator’s point of view, allowed us to centralize our administrative operations into a single

site, and at the same time, we have easy-to-monitor procedures of daily tasks, which adds to the

group’s reliability and increase of productivity,” says John Kasolis, general administrator of the

group’s IT department.

The solution also integrated the group’s Lotus Notes infrastructure with the SAP R/3 e-mail

subsystem, making the work environment easy to use for both internal and external activities. No

other competitor in the services marketplace has been willing to provide such an integration.




MICHEL THIERRYEurope: Automotive

Michel Thierry extends production control to include business partners with SAP and IBM.

ChallengeTighten financial control; create a “corporate memory” for research and development;

reduce manufacturing and operational costs

SolutionSAP R/3 4.6C application; IBM ^ iSeries 820, IBM ^ xSeries servers; IBM

Lotus Domino, IBM Lotus Domino.Doc 3.1, IBM WebSphere Application Server 4.0.4, IBM

WebSphere Portal server 4.1.4, IBM DB2 Universal Database software; services provided

by IBM Business Consulting Services, IBM Global Services, IBM Integrated Technology

Services, IBM Global Financing

Key BenefitsStock inventory savings of better than 20 percent; reduced the time taken to close figures

for each period; corporate memory enables experience gained on past projects to feed

into new projects

“By working with IBM Business Consulting Services, we gained a single partner for every functional aspect, with excellent knowledge about every technology that we have deployed. I don’t think that we could have achieved this with any other vendor, and certainly not at the same speed and the same price.”

—Bernard Taillades, director of organization




MICHEL THIERRY (continued) Michel Thierry S.A. is a leading manufacturer of textiles for the automotive industry—number

one in Europe and number three in the world. The textiles it designs and manufactures are used

for car seats, armrests, headrests and other interior automotive components. Michel Thierry is

based in France and has industrial sites and offices in Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, Spain, the

United States and Turkey.

In the 1970s, Michel Thierry produced textiles for clothing, using information systems designed for

this specific market sector. When the business changed its focus, choosing to specialize entirely

in automotive fabrics, these information systems were no longer capable of meeting all its needs.

Bernard Taillades, director of organization, explains, “Essentially, our legacy systems were totally

closed—there was no automatic sharing of data internally. The same data would need to be

rekeyed endlessly in different systems, making it difficult to gain an accurate view of cross-

departmental processes. There was a clear impact on data quality, and the systems were costly

and inefficient to run.”

A further problem was that power users in Michel Thierry had created their own applications,

using commercial Microsoft products, to tackle the perceived shortcomings of the central

enterprise systems. This fragmentation of information was inefficient, and a lack of proper

documentation and strategic direction made such practices an unsustainable scenario in

the long term.

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MICHEL THIERRY (continued) Breaking down the barriersThe goal for Michel Thierry was to create an open, centralized system, as Bernard Taillades explains,

“With the old system, everything was trapped inside the four walls of the enterprise, so it was difficult

to track products once they had been sent out to partners or subcontractors. We wanted a system

that would not only bring down the barriers between internal departments, but that would also open

up connections with the outside world—with suppliers, subcontractors and customers.”

Tracking value across productionMichel Thierry’s fabrics are designed in close cooperation with the automotive manufacturers.

After manufacture, the materials are sent for finishing and fitting by tier-one automotive suppliers,

such as Faurecia, Johnson Controls and Lear. The value of the fabric rises with each stage of

the manufacturing process. Without the ability to track fabric once it had been sent for finishing,

Michel Thierry was unable to conduct accurate financial audits of its inventory and stock posi-

tions. By introducing real-time interfaces with the systems of external partners, Michel Thierry

aimed to gain a better view of the extended supply chain, to accelerate communications and to

reduce administrative costs.

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MICHEL THIERRY (continued) Says Bernard Taillades, “The goal was to identify weak points in the production process and

thereby reduce losses. If you can improve quality, you will improve profitability. By this I mean

quality at every stage, from design through to delivery. In particular, we wanted to accelerate and

reduce the cost of our research and development processes. Our research and development

department was not computerized in any way, so there was no corporate memory. Each project

would effectively start from a blank sheet of paper, so different designers in different countries

could not easily share information on similar projects. All the useful experience was locked away

in people’s heads, and of course people don’t last forever.”

Capturing this data has led to improved information sharing and production process tracking,

and the company was able to develop clear supply chain rules and enhance its quality control.

Using the same techniques, Michel Thierry aimed to capitalize on its research and development

experience, and to enable elements from successful past projects to feed into new projects,

accelerating the design cycle. Michel Thierry’s customers are also at the heart of the new

solution, with the ability to create specific project reports, delivered on the Web for immediate

inspection. Standard customer relationship management processes have been implemented

on both SAP and the document management application IBM Lotus Domino.Doc® software, to

ensure complete project control.




MICHEL THIERRY (continued) Choosing SAP, choosing IBMMichel Thierry decided to replace its disparate systems architecture with a single ERP solution,

and considered four major vendors. The selection criteria were partly technological—Michel

Thierry was using IBM OS/400® operating system-based systems with IBM DB2 Universal

Database software, and wanted to stay on the platform. On the functional side, a detailed analy-

sis was made to ensure that the chosen solution would correspond to the company’s needs.

Finally, Michel Thierry considered the durability of each vendor, aiming to work with a stable

and robust teammate. Says Bernard Taillades, “After an exhaustive selection process, we chose

SAP R/3 software as our strategic ERP platform for the future. Having made the choice for SAP

software, we then carried out a similarly rigorous selection process for the systems integrator

role. We knew that we were changing absolutely everything. The advantage of working with IBM

was that they could offer all the technology we needed—hardware, software, services—from a

single source at a very attractive price.

“Of course, we wanted to stay on OS/400 and DB2 Universal Database software, so it made

sense to work with IBM. And looking at the other technologies we planned around SAP software,

such as WebSphere and Lotus Domino software, it was clear again that IBM would be the best

partner. We also got a positive impression of the quality of IBM’s specialist consultants for SAP.”




MICHEL THIERRY (continued) End-to-end solution with IBMMichel Thierry engaged with IBM Business Consulting Services and embarked on an ambi-

tious project to design, build and deploy an end-to-end process and information management

system, based on SAP R/3, Lotus Domino, WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Portal

server and DB2 Universal Database software, running on IBM ^ iSeries and IBM

^ xSeries servers.

IBM Business Consulting Services led a nine-month period of rethinking business processes to

design innovative solutions, at the end of which IBM Business Consulting Services delivered a

summary report on the needs, new solutions and a description of the functional flow. The second

phase included the SAP software configuration, the development of the Web application and

creation of the links between the SAP software and the Web. This phase concluded with SAP

software skills transfer to key users within Michel Thierry.

The third major phase was solution deployment, training support go-live, managed by the IBM

Global Services method.




MICHEL THIERRY (continued) SAP R/3 solutions manage all the main processes, such as purchase, production, sales, quality

control, maintenance, project follow-up, finance and controlling. To handle Michel Thierry’s textile

design and development needs, a specific Web application was created that links to the SAP

solutions in real time and delivers comprehensive information needed by the users, such as stock,

structure, quality definition, including data from both the current and the past projects database.

Integrating the technical solutionMichel Thierry subsequently worked with IBM Integrated Technology Services for installation and

configuration, and with IBM Global Financing to arrange a financial offer that suited the com-

pany’s exact budgetary requirements. “Working with IBM Business Consulting Services, SAP

software is an enormous success at Michel Thierry,” remarks Bernard Taillades. “The finance

team wouldn’t change it for the world, because it has opened up many doors that were previ-

ously closed. Fundamentally, the combination of IBM and SAP gives them what they need to

work each day—faster, and with less effort.” Michel Thierry estimates that the SAP solution will

reduce total stock by approximately 20 percent. Additional operational savings from the elimina-

tion of data rekeying and keystroke errors combine to produce a highly cost-effective information

management platform. Finally, the SAP solution has removed the need for managers to self-build

reporting applications, as all current data is available through the SAP software.




MICHEL THIERRY (continued) SAP software in actionThe first stage of the project, which is already operational, covers all financial and administra-

tive functions for the research and development department of Michel Thierry. The second

stage, currently in development, will extend the new architecture to the whole organization. The

research and development department is semiautonomous, having its own procurement, sales

and production departments, so it was an excellent test bed for the full enterprise solution.

Says Bernard Taillades, “The research and development system has been in production since

May 2003, including document management and WebSphere portals. We are using SAP

Finance Controlling, Production Planning, Materials Management, and Sales & Distribution

across all commercial activities in the research and development department, from research to

production, administration and project tracking.”

In research and development, all work now passes through a totally computerized system. SAP

software is used to control planning and production processes, and all documents are managed

throughout their full life cycles by Lotus Domino.Doc software, enabling designers to search and

access previous projects—the corporate memory.




MICHEL THIERRY (continued) Bernard Taillades comments, “SAP doesn’t offer a specialized solution for textiles, so we worked

with IBM Business Consulting Services to develop additional functionality around the core

systems. Using Java code running under WebSphere software and totally integrated with SAP

software, in real time, we have achieved all our functional goals.

“This additional development work with IBM is a major factor in the success of the solution,

giving us incredibly powerful management of stock, production and finance through SAP soft-

ware. And when you have Java and WebSphere software, you can communicate effectively with

the outside world, which is what gives the system its power.

“The manufacture of textiles is highly complex, so we couldn’t just implement SAP software and

expect it to meet all of our needs. But the combination of SAP, Lotus Domino and WebSphere

software has enabled us to set up processes and workflows across the enterprise and out to our

partners beyond.”

Reaching out across the WebMichel Thierry has implemented IBM WebSphere Portal server in order to enable designers

in France, Germany and Brazil to share information and access technical designs easily and

quickly through nothing more than a Web browser. This information sharing is helping to improve

quality and time to market, both of which will lead to enhanced customer service.




MICHEL THIERRY (continued) For a global solution such as this, covering all aspects of the business and reaching out to

partners and customers beyond the enterprise, high availability is an absolute necessity.

Michel Thierry has ensured the highest possible availability by running SAP, Lotus Domino

and WebSphere software on an IBM iSeries solution.

The two IBM ^ iSeries 820 servers are mirrored using Vision Suite from Vision Solutions,

Inc., which ensures that all data is replicated between the servers in real time. The primary server

runs the SAP software production environment for France, and is linked via gigabit Ethernet

connections to SAP application servers running on IBM ^ xSeries machines. The sec-

ondary i820 runs the backup environment for France, alongside the SAP software development

environment for France, and development, test and production for WebSphere and Lotus

Domino software.

In the unlikely event of unscheduled downtime on the production machine, all major systems—

SAP and Lotus Domino software, and the WebSphere layer—can be recovered to the backup

server in less than one hour.




MICHEL THIERRY (continued) Says Bernard Taillades, “The iSeries server is our guarantee of reliability. We have used OS/400

operating system-based systems and their precursors since around 1978; we’ve simply never

had a breakdown, and this has protected our investment for more than 25 years. The other

reason for staying on the platform is that we have excellent internal competence and great expe-

rience of DB2 software—a cornerstone for reliability and stability—so we avoided the costs of

retraining technicians on a different platform.”

first goal achievedMichel Thierry has now successfully opened up its key information systems, both internally

and externally. All corporate information is stored in centralized systems and databases, and is

accessible both by all employees and by trusted external partners.

Says Bernard Taillades, “We see SAP software as a major building block in the solution, but of

course there are other equally important building blocks. It’s the totality of the solution that deliv-

ers the real benefits, and here the integration and development work carried out by the joint IBM

and Michel Thierry team is crucial.




MICHEL THIERRY (continued) “Together, we have built an advanced system for controlling the flow of information through-

out the enterprise and beyond. Across this solution, we are capable today of harmonizing all

dialogues and exchanges, using either EDI or the Web portals. In the past, we have relied on

telephone, fax, e-mail and postal communications, so moving to this harmonized, automated

means of communication will have significant cost and time benefits.”

Michel Thierry currently works with 12 textiles subcontractors, and is planning to give them

access to its internal systems via Web portals created and managed using WebSphere software.

These portals will enable the companies to report on their production and shipping in real time,

helping Michel Thierry to track production faster and more cost effectively.

Says Bernard Taillades, “In the future, we want to have a full understanding of all our stock,

whether in the European Union or elsewhere in the world, and to be able to track everything very

precisely. Using SAP, Lotus Domino and WebSphere software, we are creating an advanced

system that will allow us to improve communications at every level and for every stage of our

production process.

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MICHEL THIERRY (continued) Weaving a new future with SAP and IBM“Of course, this is a long and complex project, and so we have developed a very close working

relationship with IBM Business Consulting Services, who brought a fresh approach to our thinking.

The project team numbers around 50 at the moment, approximately 20 of whom are from IBM.

“We think that the architecture of the IBM solution is very innovative, particularly in terms of the

integration between different technologies.

“By working with IBM Business Consulting Services, we gained a single partner for every func-

tional aspect, with excellent knowledge about every technology that we have deployed. I don’t

think that we could have achieved this with any other vendor, and certainly not at the same

speed and the same price. For this major initiative, I have a single point of management contact

with a single vendor, which is an enormous advantage in project management terms.”

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NEXTRAEurope: Banking and financial

Nextra banks on IBM portal solution to win and retain customers.

ChallengeWith two financial groups about to merge, Nextra’s management feared that differences in

business processes and technology between the groups would erode customer service

and drive away clients

Why Become an On Demand Business?Nextra needed to deploy a common set of efficient business practices throughout the

organization to shorten turnaround time for operational tasks, improve productivity and

provide responsive customer service

SolutionNextra streamlined business processes throughout the merged company to provide real-

time, responsive customer relationship management, improving customer service and

protecting its competitive position

Key BenefitsEnhanced responsiveness to customers, improved productivity and efficiency; tens of

thousands of dollars saved in software deployment and training costs

“No matter what branch of the company they contact, customers expect us to know who they are—their portfolios, service histories, preferences and requirements—and to serve them accordingly. But following the merger, we could no longer deliver on that expectation.”

—Massimo Paglietti, IT manager, Nextra




NEXTRA (continued)According to a recent study, mergers in the banking sector often cause customers to

leave their banks—primarily for factors such as deterioration of customer service.* So on

the eve of a merger that created Nextra Investment Management sgr (Nextra), its directors

were concerned about retaining the company’s customer base and competitive edge.

A subsidiary of the Intesa financial group, Nextra (www.nextrasgr.com) is the leading asset

management company in Italy. Headquartered in Milan, the company’s 600 employees

manage assets totaling more than E120 billion (US$132 billion). Nextra was born in 2002

through the union of Comit Asset Management (CAM) and Intesa Asset Management

(IAM), two successful companies in the Intesa group.

As the merger date approached, Nextra’s management saw potential problems in the

business processes of the two asset management groups. IAM—the larger of the two

groups—was using standardized company-wide processes that allowed it to identify its

most valuable customers and target them for priority service. IAM could also package and

deliver products and services tailored to the needs of particular segments. CAM, on the

other hand, relied on informal procedures based on localized information that was commu-

nicated largely by word of mouth, or in memos and e-mail messages. It was not equipped

to deliver the timely, personalized service that IAM’s customers had grown to expect.

“IBM was the only vendor with the leadership, expertise and financial industry experience to help us meet our goals quickly and cost-effectively. IBM and its partners assumed a leadership role in transforming and automating our business processes, freeing our personnel to focus on making the merger a success.”

—Massimo Paglietti




NEXTRA (continued)Nextra’s management feared that once the two groups merged, the company would not be

able to deliver consistent, responsive service. Nextra IT Manager Massimo Paglietti recalls, “No

matter what branch of the company they contact, customers expect us to know who they are—

their portfolios, service histories, preferences and requirements—and to serve them accordingly.

But following the merger, we could no longer deliver on that expectation, because we could

not share information about a customer’s history or preferences, track marketing campaigns or

ensure that employees were updated about policy changes.

“We were concerned that customers would grow weary of re-explaining their situation to every

new contact person and receiving conflicting or incomplete information from agents who could

not handle their requests in a defined manner,” Paglietti continues. “Ultimately, we feared that

account holders would lose confidence in our ability to respond to their needs and take their

business elsewhere.”

Efficient business practicesNextra had to act quickly to eliminate these barriers without jeopardizing the merger’s critical

timetable. It needed to deploy a common set of efficient business practices and technologies

across the merged organization to increase operational efficiencies, boost productivity and rede-

ploy staff—all with the aim of shortening turnaround times for operational tasks and providing

stellar customer service.


Employees can access real-time data, leading to increased productivity and faster answers for customers

Tens of thousands of dollars saved in software deploy-ment and training costs during the first six months after implementation

Open-standards-based technology provides flexibil-ity to quickly and easily add and integrate new applica-tions as needed

Shortened time to market for new financial products

•

•

•

•




NEXTRA (continued)“When a customer calls,” says Paglietti, “we want our service representatives to be ready to greet

that individual by name. The customer’s history, preferences and any outstanding issues should

be immediately accessible on the agent’s computer screen. The agent who takes the call could

then help the customer immediately resolve issues or move ahead to consider new products.

By providing the consistent, coordinated services customers deserve—even in a newly merged

enterprise—we hope to retain all our current clients and, ultimately, gain new ones.”

Responsive customer serviceTo meet its goals, Nextra provided enterprise-wide access to the customer-centric applications

and automated workflows that were the foundation of IAM’s high performance asset manage-

ment business, to take advantage of that group’s success. The company worked with IBM

Business Consulting Services to design and implement a Web-based, enterprise-wide employee

portal that would provide a single point of access to business functions and the applications

supporting them—beginning with customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise

resource planning (ERP) systems. As a result, Nextra employees can now identify customer

needs and cross-selling opportunities, promote new products and deal with customer service

requests in real time—all in a responsive, coordinated manner, in keeping with the company’s

established best practices.

Key components

SoftwareIBM WebSphere Application Server

IBM WebSphere Portal Enable

IBM WebSphere Edge Server

IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer

IBM Lotus Domino

IBM Lotus Notes

•

•

•

•

•

•

ServersIBM ^ pSeries 660

IBM ^ xSeries 360

•

•

ServicesIBM Business Consulting Services

IBM Business Innovation Center, Milan

•

•

Business PartnersSemea Sud

Sysnet

•

•




NEXTRA (continued)Now, when a customer calls, a service agent can see accounts and holdings at a glance. On

the basis of a customer’s profile, an opportunities screen can suggest tailored services and

products relevant to the customer’s account. The bottom line: customers get highly personalized,

coordinated services and answers to their questions in real time.

Open standards for ease of integrationThe Web portal, known as NEXTRANet, was built by professionals from IBM Business Consulting

Services and the IBM Innovation Center in Milan, who worked with Nextra to define the portal’s

branding and graphic appearance, establish its navigation architecture and generate standard

templates to create Web content. IBM Business Partners Semea Sud and SysNet consulted on

specialized system architecture.

The IBM and Nextra teams developed and implemented the portal in just six months, using

IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer software. IBM WebSphere Application Server

software is the run-time engine for the Java technology-based applications that deliver services

and information to all Nextra employees. IBM WebSphere Edge Server software, running on a

resilient IBM ^ pSeries 660 system, provides caching, load balancing and content-based

routing support to enhance NEXTRANet’s availability, scalability and performance. The solution

also leverages IBM WebSphere Portal Enable software running on an IBM ^ xSeries 360

server to deliver single-sign-on integration with the company’s IBM Lotus Notes and IBM Lotus

Domino messaging and collaboration platform.




NEXTRA (continued)Users log on to the secure NEXTRANet site from their PCs, through standard Web browsers.

From the site’s main page, they can conduct an intuitive search for the information they require,

access information about current projects, read reports or corporate news, engage in discus-

sion groups or link to the company address book and schedule. The portal also serves as a Web

client for Nextra’s SAS CRM solution and SAP ERP system.

According to Paglietti, WebSphere software was the only On Demand Business platform that

could meet the company’s needs. “We evaluated other Web integration solutions, such as BEA

WebLogic,” he says. “But we quickly saw that WebSphere software was the only comprehensive,

integrated solution that would allow us to seamlessly integrate our business processes. The pow-

erful WebSphere development environment has enabled our team to build, integrate and deploy

applications in record time.”

Productivity and responsivenessAlthough Nextra has not yet formally quantified the benefits of its NEXTRANet portal, Paglietti

says they are extensive. “The real-time access to information and business processes that our

employee portal delivers has increased our productivity by ensuring we are all working accord-

ing to the same best practices and by reducing the time required to locate information,” he

says. “Employees have maintained the high level of responsiveness to customers that originally

secured our leadership position. Our intuitive Web-based applications—created using WebSphere

application development tools—have saved us tens of thousands of dollars in costs normally

associated with client software deployment and training.”

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NEXTRA (continued)Paglietti concludes, “IBM was the only vendor with the leadership, expertise and financial

industry experience to help us meet our goals quickly and cost effectively. IBM and its partners

assumed a leadership role in transforming and automating our business processes, freeing our

personnel to focus on making the merger a success.”

For more informationPlease contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit us at:

ibm.com/ondemand

* Elizabeth K. Kiser, “Household Switching Behavior at Depository Institutions: Evidence from Survey Data,” The Federal Reserve Board, 2002, at www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2002/200244/200244pap-pdf.





OKI EUROPEEurope: Electronics

OKI Europe cuts warranty claim costs with IBM Lotus Domino.

ChallengeOKI Europe wanted to handle customer support and warranty calls more effectively,

enable call-center staff to find existing information more easily, and automate warranty and

inventory reporting to head office

SolutionWorking with IBM Premier Business Partner Conexus, OKI Europe created a single access

point to handle customer support calls, built using IBM Lotus Domino Express software

running on IBM ^ iSeries servers, and IBM Lotus Enterprise Integrator software

Key BenefitsCall-center staff productivity has risen, as the single environment has eliminated screen-

hopping and cut-and-paste actions on data; monthly inventory and warranty claims

reporting is faster and more accurate

“Working with IBM and Conexus, OKI Europe has been able to build on the IBM Lotus Domino technologies that we already trust.”

—Christian Chung, infrastructure and architecture program manager, OKI Europe




OKI EUROPE (continued)OKI Europe is a division of OKI Electric Industry Co, a global corporation employing more than

21,000 people and generating over US$6.5 billion in sales. Represented in more than 120 coun-

tries worldwide, from Brazil to the Ukraine, OKI is renowned for its business printing solutions.

Responsible for sales, distribution and support, OKI Europe handles thousands of customer calls

daily. Operators assist customers in learning to use new OKI equipment, handle support questions

and on occasion manage warranty claims.

Christian Chung, infrastructure and architecture program manager, explains the business

requirement, “We wanted to be able to track warranty-related calls in order to analyze product

performance. The costs of warranty services incurred by OKI Europe are reclaimed from OKI

manufacturing, so it is important to us to have a clear audit trail. Managing the paper trail of war-

ranty calls was not effective, and we wanted a much more productive system that would capture

information and cut our costs.”

finding the right partnerOKI Europe turned to IBM Premier Business Partner Conexus for advice. Key solution objectives

included a system that would be easy to duplicate in other European locations, that had a low

training requirement and maintenance costs, and that would integrate with the SAP solutions.

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OKI EUROPE (continued)Conexus built the new solution for OKI Europe using IBM Lotus Domino Express software

on IBM ^ iSeries servers, integrating with SAP through IBM Lotus Enterprise

Integrator® software.

Christian Chung comments, “We had a particularly ambitious timescale, because we wanted the

solution to be designed and built before the end of the budget half-year, and rolled out to all OKI

Europe offices.

“The new Lotus Domino solution meets all of our objectives. When call-center staff take a cus-

tomer warranty call, they are now able to track all the relevant data from a single location without

cutting and pasting from multiple screens. We can report on claims by product type and serial

number, and support staff can use the same data to search the knowledge base for existing

solutions to the same products.

Scalable, robust, easy to useConexus specializes in the design and implementation of IBM WebSphere and IBM Lotus

Domino solutions. OKI Europe was already using Lotus Domino server as its mail, calendaring

and groupware solution, and it made sense to capitalize on the considerable power of the soft-

ware to build the new system.

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OKI EUROPE (continued)Ed Bersey, managing director at Conexus, comments, “OKI Europe in Spain had a similar appli-

cation handling the sale and distribution of parts, both replacement and warranty. After looking at

the business logic, using Lotus Domino server we were able to build a scalable, robust, easy-to-

use system in super-quick time.

“The business pain for OKI Europe was extracting the warranty data for reporting to head office,

while the customer service pain was storing and exploiting solutions to problems.

“Building a Europe-wide solution has cut application development costs, standardized reporting

and reduced OKI Europe’s administration costs, in particular by providing a more accurate state-

ment of spare parts availability.”

Championing the businessOKI Europe is developing new ways to access its data, including browser-based access to all its

business applications.

Ed Bersey remarks, “Lotus Domino software enables new applications to be developed very

quickly, including embedded workflow such as notification of process exceptions. Using Lotus

Enterprise Integrator software has enabled OKI Europe to exploit the customer-focused advan-

tages of the Lotus solution and provide the data required for reporting from its SAP solutions.”

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OKI EUROPE (continued)Christian Chung concludes, “Working with IBM and Conexus, OKI Europe has been able to build

on the Lotus Domino technologies that we already trust. We can now capture data on the perfor-

mance of OKI products in terms of warranty calls, parts replacements and costs, and deliver this

straight to the SAP software.

“The Lotus Domino interface enables call center staff to deal effectively and quickly with cus-

tomer requests, following embedded workflows and best-practice procedures.

“The service from Conexus was excellent, with great access to IBM technical resources, and we

felt that OKI Europe had found a true champion for our business objectives, as well as an organi-

zation that had superb technical knowledge of the IBM products.”




PETRÓLEOS DE vENEzUELA (PDvSA)South America: Petrochemical

PDvSA refines staff skills with IBM Learning Solutions.

ChallengeReduce training costs while responding to employees’ needs to strengthen their skills with

up-to-date instruction

SolutionAn enterprise-wide learning solution, developed by IBM Business Consulting Services,

based on IBM Lotus Domino, IBM Lotus Domino Document Manager, IBM Lotus Web

Conferencing (formerly part of IBM Lotus Sametime), IBM Lotus Instant Messaging

(now part of IBM Lotus Sametime), IBM Lotus Team Workplace (now known as IBM

Lotus QuickPlace) software

Key BenefitsOne hundred percent ROI in three years; enhanced employee job performance; substan-

tial savings in training-related time and expenses, eliminating up to 70 percent of the cost

of traditional classroom-based instruction; enhanced responsiveness to employees’ desire

for up-to-date instruction, delivering it across the enterprise in a timely manner; ability to

focus on core oil production business

“With our IBM learning solution, we are enhancing our organizational efficiency, flexibility and cost-effectiveness while assuring that our employees have the updated skills they need to work more effectively. All of it will show up on our bottom line.”

—José Guaita, distance education coordinator, Petróleos de Venezuela




PETRÓLEOS DE vENEzUELA (continued)While quality is an imperative in any business, finding innovative and cost-efficient ways to achieve

it is more elusive—unless you’re a watchful enterprise like Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). For

the US$20 billion, state-owned oil company with refineries worldwide, the link between highly

skilled personnel and improved business performance rings loud and clear. That’s why

PDVSA (www.pdvsa.com.ve), the third-largest oil provider for the U.S., views its 20,000

employees as valuable assets. It’s also why the company considers employee training to

be a critical element in its ongoing quest for quality.

Traditionally, training has involved traveling around—and outside—the country for face-

to-face workshops. But the costs can be staggering. Up to 70 percent of the expense of

classroom instruction actually goes toward transportation, lodging and meals, according

to José Guaita, distance education coordinator at the International Center for Education

and Development, a PDVSA affiliate responsible for the company’s training programs. In

addition, Guaita notes, time spent on travel hinders workforce productivity. Recognizing

that some of the biggest and best organizations in the world are turning to e-learning to

streamline their educational processes, PDVSA became convinced that it, too, could ben-

efit by taking this path to transform its training programs.

PDVSA chose to work with IBM after evaluating learning offerings from several vendors.

Working with IBM Business Consulting Services, IBM Learning Solutions implemented an

infrastructure to support a learning management system’s virtual classroom and informal

“IBM was able to help us connect the various e-learning resources and tools that we needed and deliver them through a single user interface.”

—José Guaita




PETRÓLEOS DE vENEzUELA (continued)learning tools such as real-time communication and collaboration applications. Roughly 16,000

of the company’s employees are already taking advantage of the solution, and PDVSA expects a

100 percent return on investment (ROI) within three years.

“The speed at which information becomes outdated, along with the cost of traditional learn-

ing programs, drove us to look for better alternatives,” says Guaita. “We found exactly what we

needed in IBM. We’re now more responsive to our employees, with the ability to provide them

with more content, accessible at their convenience. With our IBM learning solution, we are

enhancing our organizational efficiency, flexibility and cost-effectiveness while assuring that our

employees have the updated skills they need to work more effectively. All of it will show up on our

bottom line.”

A more proficient workforceEmployees across the enterprise—from field workers needing technical updates to managers

enhancing their administrative or supervisory skills—can now take courses online. Currently,

PDVSA is employing a blended approach with its learning environment, providing 70 percent

of training in classrooms and 30 percent of courses (some 200 classes) through its Web-based

learning solution. About 60 percent of these courses involve static material, and the goal is to

increasingly use video and Flash technology, as well as interactive features, to engage users

and promote more active learning. By turning increasingly to the Web, PDVSA is streamlining its

training process to enhance employee productivity and eliminate logistics-related expenses of

classroom instruction.




PETRÓLEOS DE vENEzUELA (continued)Says Guaita, “One of our primary objectives is to provide a single, convenient learning portal to

all of our employees. Our IBM learning solution is a cost-effective, practical and scalable solution

that will make this possible by integrating all of our resources into one platform.”

A rich IBM e-learning infrastructureThe new learning solution is based on Lotus learning software from IBM, IBM Lotus Domino,

IBM Lotus Domino Document Manager (now part of IBM Lotus Sametime) software and Lotus

collaborative tools, including IBM Lotus Instant Messaging and IBM Lotus Web Conferencing

(formerly part of Lotus Sametime), and IBM Lotus Team Workplace (now known as IBM Lotus

QuickPlace®) software. The system is integrated with SAP R/3, which tracks student progress

and individual learning programs.

The Lotus learning software provides an open-standards-based environment for the company’s

virtual classrooms, where employees can access instructional materials and take tests. When

employees become familiar with all the features of the learning system, they’ll be able to take

advantage of real-time online chats and collaborate in cooperative workgroups facilitated by

the Lotus collaboration tools. The channel into these online learning offerings—the corporate

intranet—is based on Lotus Domino server, with complete document life-cycle management

provided by Lotus Domino Document Manager software.




PETRÓLEOS DE vENEzUELA (continued)The learning solution is compliant with industry standards for e-learning, which provide develop-

ers concerned about reuse and interoperability with guidelines for structuring content. “In the

e-learning market there are three important elements: technology, services and content. A huge

issue for us is that all content migrated to the learning management system must be standard-

ized before it can be offered efficiently to users,” explains Guaita. “IBM helped us understand

the standards, then worked with us throughout the conversion process to implement them. IBM’s

technology and services were vital in helping us solve our content issue, and relieved us of a

heavy load.”

Superior integration capabilities, with service to matchAccording to Guaita, IBM learning technologies, combined with the expertise and responsive-

ness of IBM personnel, proved to be unbeatable. For the implementation of the learning solution,

IBM served as systems integrator, with consultants from IBM Business Consulting Services work-

ing closely with the local IBM office in Caracas, Venezuela.

“We found all the qualities we wanted in IBM, but we received the greatest value from its sys-

tems integration expertise and service,” says Guaita. “The IBM Business Consulting Services

team spent hours with us, first analyzing our situation and showing us exactly how to solve our

integration problems. And IBM was able to help us connect the various e-learning resources and

tools that we needed and deliver them through a single user interface, enabling us to focus on

enhancing course content.”



PETRÓLEOS DE vENEzUELA (continued)The key to business transformationOver time, PDVSA will offer more e-learning content and tools, enabling employees to

create their own instructional paths and access resources and interactive tools on demand.

However, one thing is already clear: its IBM learning solution is enabling PDVSA to maintain

its competitive advantage.

“Qualified personnel translates to better company performance,” says Guaita. “In today’s econ-

omy, fostering a high level of expertise is more important than ever, but there’s less time in the

day for training. The best way to keep our employees on top of their responsibilities is by using

the latest technologies, which is what we’re doing with IBM Learning Solutions.”

for more informationPlease contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit our Web site at:

ibm.com/learning

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SKYWORKSNorth America: Telecommunications

Skyworks: Achieving business and IT flexibility with Applications on Demand.

ChallengeRapid growth, fluctuating market forces and limited IT resources placed a premium on

adaptability, agility and responsiveness

Why Become an On Demand Business?Skyworks needed a flexible and resilient technical infrastructure and pool of highly skilled

resources to support a streamlined, integrated business model

SolutionWorking with IBM Global Services, Skyworks receives applications management services

that enable the company to focus on growth rather than IT operations

Key BenefitsEighteen percent cost savings over previous solution

More responsive and business-focused internal IT resources

Scalability to accommodate changes in the marketplace

•

•

•

“The value proposition lies in the level of services we get on a 24x7 basis … it’s a very reasonable cost and a reasonable contract mechanism.”

—Peter Sebilian, director of IT infrastructure, Skyworks

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SKYWORKS (continued)Responding to market changeFor manufacturers in the telecommunications industry, it’s a tough environment: products

are complex, life cycles are short, demand is cyclical and everything depends on main-

taining an innovative edge. In the space of a single year or less, the marketplace can

change dramatically. Agility and responsiveness are critical. And no one knows that better

than Skyworks.

Formed in 2002 through the merger of Alpha Industries, Inc. and Conexant Systems

Inc.’s wireless communications business, Massachusetts-based Skyworks Solutions,

Inc. (www.skyworksinc.com) has achieved remarkable growth. The company has some

4,000 employees worldwide, with 60 percent located outside the United States at facili-

ties throughout Asia Pacific, Europe and Mexico. Skyworks is a leading provider of radio

frequency components and complete mobile communications solutions; its components

are found in many of the world’s cell phones and other wireless devices.

Skyworks knew from the very beginning that it needed to design its business and opera-

tions to be simple, flexible and streamlined to respond to changing market demands.

“Our corporate tagline is ‘Breakthrough Simplicity,’” says Louw Kotze, vice president of

IT at Skyworks. “It’s something we truly believe in, not only for our products, but for our

entire business.”

“The perfect state for us would be a totally elastic IT shop, but that’s very difficult when you own and manage the IT assets and headcount yourself.”

—Louw Kotze, vice president of IT, Skyworks

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SKYWORKS (continued)For Skyworks, keeping things simple and flexible meant using a hosted IT solution and remote

applications management services rather than building an in-house data center to support the

new organization.

finding the right partnersSkyworks’ initial IT infrastructure solution, a legacy of the merger, was adequate at first. However,

it was soon apparent that something more robust and flexible would be needed to support the

company’s integrated business model, which relies on teams around the world working together

around-the-clock to bring products to market as quickly and efficiently as possible.

“We were experiencing substantial growth, and the nature of the business was changing,” says

Peter Sebilian, director of IT infrastructure at Skyworks. “Our hosting partner was quite proficient

at providing appropriate levels of support, but if we expanded into other areas, we knew we

wouldn’t be able to meet our business objectives as quickly as we required.”

As a newly formed company looking to quickly establish marketplace traction, Skyworks needed

to establish a highly scalable, flexible IT environment that would follow the philosophy of simplic-

ity and accommodate growth while keeping costs in check. “A key factor in making this change

was the need for 24x7 support for our global operations,” says Sebilian. “To develop that in-

house, in our dynamic environment, is unrealistic. You can’t staff it 8 to 12 hours a day in the U.S.

and then have people on call. We have enough activity that it would demand a multiple-shift

environment, which would have been difficult for us to resource and fund.”


Total savings of 18 percent compared to the previous IT solution

Internal IT staff is more responsive and flexible in supporting business demands and strategic growth initiatives

Skyworks can grow or change its business model freely, without being con-strained by IT

Access and availability of operational expertise, as well as SAP and manage-ment skills, that would be far more expensive to have in-house

Variable pricing and offsite hosting optimize IT infra-structure and minimize capital expenditures

•

•

•

•

•




SKYWORKS (continued)Kotze was all for a one-stop shop at the beginning. “But we decided that a multipartner

approach would be best for us,” he says. The key factors in the search for new, best-of-breed

partners were flexibility of relationship, pricing and long-term stability. A third-party provider

was ultimately chosen to host and maintain the physical infrastructure and actual servers. Corio,

now part of IBM Global Services, was chosen for the management task, which entails the actual

daily operations, tuning, administration and maintenance of Skyworks’ SAP enterprise suite, SAP

BASIS middleware, Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino software. Additional management services

include capacity management and collaborative planning with Skyworks to handle anticipated

peaks in demand.

“We wanted to be with providers who were doing this for many people … who were stable and

who had the necessary resource base and expertise to be able to meet our needs over the long

term,” says Kotze. “This is why we were very confident in choosing IBM.” Kotze also points to

IBM’s staff of certified SAP professionals, who average over nine years of SAP experience and

would now be available to support Skyworks.

Helping Skyworks remain lean and responsiveManagement services are delivered to Skyworks through the IBM Global Services OnSite offer-

ing, a part of the IBM Applications on Demand™ pay-as-you-go IT service platform. IBM OnSite

allows companies to use their own data centers or, as Skyworks elected to do, make use of a

third-party hosting provider. Skyworks also calls on IBM Global Services for individual projects

beyond the scope of the standard monthly contract on an as-needed basis.

Key components

SoftwareIBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino Services

SAP R/3 and SAP BASIS Services

IBM Global Services Applications On Demand – OnSite

IBM Application Services for SAP

•

•

•

•




SKYWORKS (continued)The initial application management engagement included several months of work with a project

manager from Corio and IBM, who together with the Skyworks team created detailed implemen-

tation schedules and responsibility matrices that addressed each and every component in the

enterprise. “This proved very useful—helping us identify exactly what parts of the overall solu-

tion we’re responsible for internally and what the IBM contract covers, on a worldwide basis,”

Sebilian notes.

Sebilian also appreciates the variable pricing structure offered by IBM. “We have a monthly fee

based on a variety of factors, but we were also provided with a detailed a la carte menu. It gives

us great flexibility and cost-effectiveness … it makes it easy to scale the solution as needed,

because we know up front what the costs will be,” he says. The contract is reviewed on a quar-

terly basis in a formalized process that keeps everything on track. Skyworks has elected to keep

certain IT activities in-house, such as application configuration and development, and help-desk

services, since these do not require rapid scalability or variable pricing.

“We categorize the maturity of our relationship with IBM into three phases: migration and stabiliza-

tion, production and growth execution,” adds Sebilian. “The first two phases came to fruition on

schedule and on budget through shared responsibility and a partnership philosophy. The final

phase, which is ongoing, has been strongly supported by IBM. Its professional services organiza-

tion has been integral to several key projects involving technical architecture redesign, performance

improvement strategies and SAP system-related solution rollouts. IBM brings to Skyworks a

broad skill-set availability virtually unattainable through a traditional consultative model.”



SKYWORKS (continued)Skyworks’ multipartner solution has paid off handsomely, with an 18 percent cost savings over

the previous environment. In addition, it has allowed the company to apply the resources and

expertise of its internal IT staff, who best understand the business and the users, on highly strate-

gic activities that directly impact the bottom line. In short, Skyworks’ chosen IT path has enabled

the company to remain lean and responsive, able to invest in growth and innovation without

having to make heavy capital expenditures in IT operations.

“The independent contracts have proven very beneficial for us,” Kotze concludes. “They’ve

allowed us to remain true to our corporate vision of simplicity and have given us the edge we

need to grow vigorously in a difficult economy.”

for more informationPlease contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit us at:

ibm.com/ondemand





TRANSALTANorth America: Utilities

TransAlta powers up with IBM WebSphere Portal and SAP Enterprise Portal.

ChallengeProvide integrated business information; enhance enterprise communication and

collaboration; simplify enterprise-wide user experience; reduce costs of doing business

SolutionSAP R/3 application; IBM ^ pSeries server; IBM WebSphere Portal, IBM

WebSphere Business Integration Server, IBM WebSphere MQ Workflow, IBM Lotus

Domino, SAP R/3, SAP Business Information Warehouse, SAP Enterprise Portal software;

services provided by IBM Global Services, IBM Software Services, IBM SAP Collaboration

Technology Support Center (CTSC)

Key BenefitsSingle access point for users of SAP applications, Lotus Domino and desktop productivity

applications; single user sign-on for all services within TransAlta; reduced IT department

maintenance and system costs with fewer interfaces to maintain

“With IBM WebSphere Portal and SAP Enterprise Portal software, TransAlta now has a single presentation layer for all business applications.”

—John McGrath, program manager, TransAlta Enterprise Portal project




TRANSALTA (continued) Founded in 1911, TransAlta is the largest nonregulated power generation and wholesale

marketing company in Canada. TransAlta has annual revenues of more than CAN$2.5 billion,

with operations in Australia, Canada, Mexico and the U.S.

TransAlta has used SAP since 1995, replacing some 40 disparate applications with a single,

unified view of enterprise-wide information and business processes. In 2000, TransAlta

migrated its SAP systems to IBM ^ pSeries servers, configured in a High Availability

Clustered Multi Processing (IBM HACMP™) environment. In short, SAP and IBM form the

foundation of TransAlta’s business information strategy.

John McGrath, program manager on the TransAlta Enterprise Portal project, comments,

“SAP R/3 has been a great success, and we also use collaborative technologies such as

Lotus Domino, Lotus QuickPlace and Lotus Sametime software. We could clearly see the

benefits of integrating these technologies with our core SAP systems.”

To meet this objective, TransAlta created a single business portal that allows users access to

SAP, Lotus Domino server and—as icing on the cake—standard desktop office applications,

all from the same single-user environment and sign-on. The challenge was to provide portal

access to such a diverse range of data and applications, and to achieve this TransAlta has

exploited both IBM WebSphere Portal and SAP Enterprise Portal software in a dual portal

strategy, supported by multiple IBM WebSphere integration technologies.

“With IBM we have been able to build everything from the ground up, and the dual portal strategy has been a great success, playing to the strengths of SAP and IBM. Without help from IBM and SAP, mainly through the CTSC and the local IBM team, we would not have been able to achieve this solution, so I can say it has been a very good partnership.”

—John McGrath, program manager, TransAlta Enterprise Portal project




TRANSALTA (continued) “With IBM, TransAlta is delivering both SAP and other applications in a friendly, consistent and

efficient way. Integrating people, processes, technology and information is our core mission

statement,” says John McGrath.

“IBM has been a very good partner for TransAlta, and working with IBM was central to the

success of the project. For example, during deployment we ran into a few problems, and IBM

Software Services was excellent in delivering the solution in a timely fashion so we didn’t have to

hold anything up.”

“IBM Global Services managed the Enterprise Portal project to ensure we implemented success-

fully, even given our ambitious timeline.”

The support of the IBM SAP Collaboration Technology Support Center (CTSC) during the archi-

tectural design phase was a very important asset in the portal project.

Integrated portals reduce costsPortal technology means that users need only have browser access to be able to view, manage

and enter data into SAP, Lotus Domino and many other applications. The consistent interface for

multiple programs means training costs are low, and ease of use—and productivity—is high.

Integrating SAP R/3 data, Lotus Domino collaboration and teamwork applications, and office

productivity programs data proved to be a tough integration task.




TRANSALTA (continued) “There is no more efficient way to deliver SAP content than through SAP Enterprise Portal,”

explains John McGrath, “and this was used for what we term the vertical SAP applications. For

enterprise-wide team tools, we implemented IBM WebSphere Enterprise Portal software.” Also

the WebSphere Enterprise Portal software integrates the Lotus Domino and collaboration appli-

cations into a single user experience.

The look and feel of the WebSphere Portal installation has been tailored to the precise look and

feel of the SAP Enterprise Portal—so closely, in fact, that the dual portal appears to be a single

interface to users, thanks to the flexibility of the IBM WebSphere Portal software.

From within the TransAlta dual portal, users are able to reach all their relevant SAP applica-

tions, as well as log in to Lotus Notes e-mail, calendaring, Lotus QuickPlace, Lotus Sametime

and other Lotus Domino applications. A single user login, spanning over the WebSphere Portal,

the SAP Enterprise Portal and all SAP applications, grants access to relevant application areas

without the need to reauthenticate from system to system. In addition, the user gets a consistent

interface regardless of the application being used.

Two complex landscapes have been combined in one integrated, simplified platform. The inte-

gration framework combines both technologies on a presentation layer, which allows seamless

integration for the end user.




TRANSALTA (continued) Before WebSphere Portal software was introduced, users would have to jump between appli-

cations to find data, or send faxes or make calls. By being able to move between underlying

applications while inside the portal, users are able to find and act on the information they need in

a more timely fashion. This cuts the costs of doing business by reducing stores of paper-based

information, such as events, news, staff directory, self-service human resources materials, proce-

dure manuals and reference documents.

Support from IBM Business PartnersThe TransAlta Enterprise Portal project was developed using IBM Global Services, IBM Software

Services, the CTSC and IBM Business Partner Sandbox Systems. Sandbox produced a dual

portal proof of concept in three weeks that convinced TransAlta of the viability of the dual portal

approach. The speed of production and low maintenance cost of the WebSphere Portal software—

reducing support staff assigned to the project from about 20 to around 5—convinced the

TransAlta team that WebSphere software offered the right solution.

“WebSphere technologies provide all the back-end integration technologies we need to provide

a single login and user experience,” says Alan Wong, portal architect on the TransAlta portal.

“When we introduce new software, training costs are lower, and the IT team is able to respond

faster to new application requirements.”

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TRANSALTA (continued) WorkflowTransAlta’s next ambition is to combine portal access to information with workflow capabilities,

allowing end users to work their business processes through the portals. This entails being able

to tap in to operational systems, and provide information directly to the portal.

To achieve this, TransAlta has selected IBM WebSphere MQ Workflow software, and IBM as its

integration partner.

“The high-level plan is to integrate operations and data everywhere. Our vision for the future is

to turn the portal into the single source for all information and user needs; in order to do that we

need to be able to connect to different systems,” says John McGrath.

Playing to dual portal strengths“With IBM we have been able to build everything from the ground up, and the dual portal strat-

egy has been a great success, playing to the strengths of SAP and IBM. Without help from IBM

and SAP, mainly through the CTSC, we would not have been able to achieve this solution, so I

can say it has been a very good partnership,” says John McGrath.

“Our CIO, Greg Wilson, is a proponent of leveraging TransAlta’s strategic vendor partnerships

with IBM and SAP. TransAlta plans to exploit the capabilities of both IBM WebSphere and SAP

NetWeaver software for better business solutions and value for the corporation. IBM has strong

practices in both these technology stacks, and with the assistance of the joint IBM and SAP

Competency Center we can ensure even greater success for TransAlta!” concludes John McGrath.

1�1 BACK NEXT HOME



UNITED NATIONS WORLD fOOD PROGRAMMENorth America: Government and public service

IBM delivers SAP excellence at the United Nations World food Programme.

ChallengeWFP wanted to transform its business processes, which were based on separate systems;

the organization had relied on manual consolidation between departments and interfaces,

which caused delays and inaccuracy

SolutionMySAP.com application; IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus

Domino, Microsoft Windows software; IBM ^ xSeries server; IBM Global Services

designed, managed and maintained the complex environment

Key BenefitsIntegrated solution, increased efficiency and performance after transformation of the

business processes

“IBM’s SAP experts worked closely with our in-house team through a process of analysis, iterative design, implementation and deployment. The resulting system met all project objectives, and is delivering real benefits in all areas.”

—Ken Herman, CIO and director, United Nations World Food Programme

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UNITED NATIONS WORLD fOOD PROGRAMME (continued)By implementing a powerful SAP environment to consolidate global information, the United

Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has increased its efficiency and responsiveness to

donors, and improved its ability to deliver help to the needy. IBM provided the SAP expertise

to deliver a highly successful solution. Established in 1963, The World Food Programme is a

United Nations agency that fights global hunger. The organization employs more than 7,000 staff

members, who work together to provide food aid to save lives and promote self-reliance in disad-

vantaged communities all around the world. In 2001, WFP fed 77 million people in 82 countries,

and the organization’s ultimate goal is to eliminate global hunger by helping to support sustained

development in the world’s poorest regions.

A large and complex organization, WFP wanted to transform its business processes in order

to increase efficiency and performance. The organization partnered with IBM on an ambitious

project aimed at improving support and management for projects, funds, logistics and transpor-

tation. WFP also wanted to improve the accuracy and transparency of project reports provided

to major donors, and to integrate human resources and payroll processes, which were then

outsourced to another U.N. agency. The integrated features and power of the mySAP.com solu-

tions made it the perfect information platform for WFP’s needs, and IBM’s extensive experience

of designing, managing and maintaining complex SAP implementations was a key factor in the

success of the project. The IBM and SAP solution delivers consistency in all business processes

at WFP, and provides end-to-end project management. Integrated supply chain processes maxi-

mize cost-efficiency and speed of reaction, and automated functions in human resources and

finance ensure faster and more efficient internal processes.




UNITED NATIONS WORLD fOOD PROGRAMME (continued)Expert methodologyThe SAP implementation at WFP covers financial, logistics and human resources solutions,

increasing efficiency by providing an integrated environment for all users. Previously, the organi-

zation had relied on interfaces between different systems or manual consolidation of data across

departments, which caused delays and inaccuracy.

IBM undertook extensive business process reengineering at WFP, then used its Method BLUE

methodology to optimize SAP implementation and ensure that the project delivered all require-

ments on time. Says Ken Herman, CIO and director at WFP, “IBM’s SAP experts worked closely

with our in-house team through a process of analysis, iterative design, implementation and

deployment. The resulting system met all project objectives, and is delivering real benefits in all

areas.” The implementation consists of mySAP.com solutions in the areas of financial accounting,

controlling, materials management, project system, and sales and distribution running in a

Microsoft Windows environment on IBM ^ xSeries servers (IBM Netfinity® models 7000).




UNITED NATIONS WORLD fOOD PROGRAMME (continued)Consistency and controlThe solution has brought significant benefits to WFP, and can be accessed by staff in remote

locations all around the world. On the finance side, it provides full consistency between project

and fund management structures, ensuring that each cost element is correctly funded, and

automatically assigning funds to project costs. Says Ken Herman, “Finances are now better

controlled thanks to the full integration between the mySAP.com solutions, and the timely record-

ing of expenditure and early identification of savings opportunities allow us to make optimal

use of funding.” Transparency of financial information has also improved, so WFP can be sure

it is reporting accurately to major donors. It is anticipated that this will directly raise donor confi-

dence, and thereby increase funding for WFP’s vitally important work.

Better by designIntegrated logistics processes have significantly increased efficiency and speed in the supply

chain, and end-to-end project management reduces administration and improves WFP’s speed

of reaction. Powerful workflow features simplify and accelerate routine tasks and ensure audit-

able procedural compliance. The IBM and SAP solution also delivers important benefits in the

human resources area, with full integration of previously separate systems. Workflow functionality

allows end-to-end processes such as recruitment to be managed seamlessly, improving speed

and cutting manual administration significantly.



UNITED NATIONS WORLD fOOD PROGRAMME (continued)Ken Herman comments, “By implementing SAP, the World Food Programme achieves a new

level of operational efficiency. The implementation consolidates business information contained

in legacy applications into one place, fully accessible even from many of our remote loca-

tions around the world.” By managing all business information in a powerful SAP environment

designed by IBM, WFP is better able to fulfill its vital role in combating global hunger. Ken

Herman, says, “With IBM’s help as SAP implementation partner, WFP now has one authoritative,

consolidated information repository that allows us to be more responsive to our donors and, more

important, better at delivering food to the hungry poor the world over.”

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