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| Case Studies
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Action for Children/Modcomp – exclusive interview (October 2009)
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Action for Children’s roots lie in the work of a young Methodist minister, Thomas Stephenson, who in 1869, shocked by the
plight of homeless children on the streets of London, decided to take action. Professional from the start, Stephenson’s recognition of the importance of professional training was a significant contribution
to the development of childcare in the UK. The organisation he created was originally called the National Children’s Home,
or NCH, until September 2008 when its name was changed to one that better describes what it does and what it values –
Action for Children. Action for Children helps nearly 156,000 children, young
people and their families through around 420 projects across the UK. Action for Children has to keep detailed case records for each child or young person that it is involved with and decided it was time to implement its own electronic case management system. It went out to tender for the development of a case management system and selected Modcomp Systems & Solutions as the
most suitable supplier to meet its requirements.
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Premier Manufacturing/Progress Software (January 2009)
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Premier Manufacturing Corporation is a leading original equipment manufacturer supplier of fabricated wire products for the
heating, ventilating and air conditioning industry. Management had recognised the need for clearer insights into production operations. Previously, employees filled out
production cards, which administrative personnel then keyed into systems. Management then reviewed this information to try to
understand equipment utilisation, set-up time, labour productivity and production efficiency. The company selected infrastructure and development tools from Progress Software to develop, deploy, integrate and manage
critical business applications. Premier sought to capture detailed information on production to improve operational
performance, enhance workforce utilisation and analyse the production process to enable continuous improvement.
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Rohan/Progress Software – exclusive interview (September 2008)
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Rohan is the original travel clothing company, set up in 1975 as a direct response to the inertia afflicting traditional outdoor
clothing. It was the first company to use high-technology fabrics and radical design to produce ‘performance clothing’. Rohan continues to produce iconic designs. It has a pioneering culture, a maverick reputation and loyal customers, and
aims to be the authority in clothing for 21st century travel. Rohan has four different channels through which its customers can interact with it (retail shops, mail order, wholesale and the internet) so its aim was to achieve one view of the customer. In order to create a real-time network Rohan firstly installed broadband and then decided to use Progress Sonic ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) to build resilience into the network.
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Panasonic/Modcomp (August 2008)
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Panasonic is a division of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of products for
industry, business and for the home. Panasonic Industrial Europe provides equipment for manufacturing. As more of its customers started using the web, Panasonic needed to respond to the competitive pressure to provide
customers with access to real-time price, availability and order status, over the web.
However, the group had recently implemented SAP, and budget, time and technical constraints meant that it was difficult to
add web access for customers to Panasonic’s SAP system. Panasonic therefore needed a solution which would complement
SAP, add the functionality that the customers were demanding, and yet be quick and cost-effective to implement. Moreover,
security was a vital issue as the nature of the information that would be available was highly sensitive.
Panasonic turned to Modcomp, a leading supplier of manufacturing support solutions, for assistance.
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Honda/ETL Solutions (July 2008)
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Honda UK (HUK) Manufacturing, part of the Honda group, was founded in 1985 and has since established itself as a leading
automotive manufacturer in Europe. HUK has a huge network that needs to be effectively integrated, with a unit production
equal to 885 cars per day, 75% of which are exported, and 4,700 associates.
Innovation is core to the thinking of the leaders at Honda, constantly seeking new solutions and incorporating leading
technologies. Integration for the Honda dealer network is a demanding and challenging task. Its network of dealers is vast, using a great
variety of dealer management systems (DMSs), its production numbers are very large, and the quality of services exceptionally
high. HUK has chosen ETL’s Transformation Manager (TM) to provide integration for its dealer network.
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Investors in People/Pervasive Software – exclusive interview (September 2007)
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Investors in People UK (IIPUK) is a non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities
and Skills. IIPUK’s aim is to support people management and development in UK organisations through its Standard and
Profile tools.
IIPUK was formed in 1993 to take national ownership of the Investors in People ‘Standard’, protect its integrity and ensure
its successful promotion and development. The Standard provides a framework that helps organisations improve
performance and realise objectives through the effective management and development of their staff. IIPUK needed a centralised system where it could maintain up-to-date
information itself and that could be accessed as and when needed and rapidly reported on. IIP decided on a hosted CRM solution from Salesforce.com and selected Deloitte &
Touche to tailor and implement it to meet its requirements. The next challenge it faced was bringing data from its partners’ 13 different systems into the CRM solution, so it looked at a number of vendors who could provide an
integration solution and chose Business
Integrator from Pervasive Software.
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Griffiths Waite/Casewise (August 2007)
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Griffiths Waite was established in 1994 and specialises in the delivery of
BPM solutions through service oriented architecture utilising Lean Six
Sigma process improvement techniques.
Griffiths Waite has become one of the foremost authorities in Oracle
application development and e-business suite implementation, respected
widely through the Oracle user group community and Oracle itself.
Its priority is always to develop a close and enduring partnership with
clients by consistently delivering high quality systems and services. It uses Casewise Corporate Modeler at the heart of its business improvement
methodology – a Lean Six Sigma toolkit that forms the blueprint for the development of business solutions based on service
oriented architecture (SOA).
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Ideal Standard/Sterling Commerce (May 2007)
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A division of American Standard Companies, Ideal Standard
is the world’s leading provider of bathroom systems and
kitchen fixtures. With customers in over 40 countries,
American Standard employs 60,000 people across three
business operations. To maintain a leading position in global manufacturing and in
an effort to gain market share outside of the US, the company
embarked on an aggressive expansion strategy. The success of Ideal Standard’s expansion was dependent upon the company’s ability to address the underlying IT
challenge of serving and conducting business with its trading partner community. Ideal Standard required a unified system that would integrate new partners easily, sustain ongoing and future growth and offer
a single interface for dealing with customer demands. It chose Sterling Commerce's Gentran Integration Suite on the basis of its functionality, scalability and flexibility.
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Heinz/Sterling Commerce (May 2007)
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H.J. Heinz is a premier international company supplying branded foods to retail and food service channels, and has number
one or number two branded businesses in more than 50 world markets. Although it is a US-based company, approximately
60% of Heinz’s total sales come from outside the US market. In Europe, Heinz has grown organically and through acquisition over the years. This has resulted in a very fragmented IT
infrastructure that supports multiple back-end applications, ERP systems and a variety of messaging standards and
protocols. In order to maintain and improve on the level of service provided to customers, Heinz realised that it was no
longer able to, nor was it cost-effective, to run and maintain all of these systems and applications. Therefore, Heinz embarked on an ERP consolidation (standardising on SAP) and messaging standard/protocol centralisation
initiative. In order to successfully move all
customers from the fragmented communications infrastructure to the centralised EDI and SAP solution, Heinz relied on the
project management, implementation and mapping services of Sterling Commerce Professional Services organisation.
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Cancer Registries/InterSystems (December 2006)
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Few people realise that statistics and
information on cancer incidence in
England originate from the regional
cancer registries. These organisations
have the onerous task of tracking
individuals right from the first diagnosis of
the disease.
In 2005, three of the country’s nine
regional cancer registries, Thames
Cancer Registry, Merseyside and
Cheshire Cancer Registry and North
West Cancer Registry (the Registries),
initiated a pilot programme to integrate,
validate and manage information from
hundreds of data sources. The
programme, named Entente, aims to transform raw data on cancer trends, prevention and care into information that can
be used more effectively by primary care trusts, general practitioners, hospices and charities, the Office for National
Statistics, the Department of Health and others. Previously, the Registries relied on inefficient manual data collection and re-entry processes. The decision to initiate
their Entente programme and implement Ensemble from InterSystems was driven by the need to update these procedures.
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Kimberly-Clark Europe/InterSystems (December 2006)
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Employing more than 62,000 people
worldwide, Kimberly-Clark posted sales of
$15.1 billion in 2004, and produces some
of the world’s most trusted and recognised
brands – including Kleenex, Scott,
Huggies, PullUps, Kotex and Depend. It
holds the number one or number two
position globally in most of the major
consumer products categories in which it
competes. Every day, 1.3 billion people –
nearly a quarter of the world’s population –
use Kimberly-Clark’s brands.
Key to Kimberly-Clark’s success is its
ability to deliver the right products, in the
right quantities, to the right places, at the
right time. Therefore, Kimberly-Clark Europe made the strategic decision to directly manage its European transportation
through a shared service centre (SSC) based in Brighton, as part of its continuing efforts to maintain high levels of
customer service and operational efficiency. InterSystems Ensemble, a universal integration platform
engineered to facilitate rapid integration and composite application development, based on a single development and
management environment, was chosen to meet the short delivery schedule.
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Harrods/Sun – exclusive interview (November 2006)
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Harrods in Knightsbridge is arguably the most glamorous store in the world. It is also a global brand associated with luxury
and quality. With a turnover of around £610 million, it opens its doors annually to over 5 million visitors, serving them from 1
million square feet of sales space. Harrods Estates, Harrods Bank and Harrods Aviation are among the other companies
that belong to Harrods Holdings, as well as an online and mail order business. In the 21st century, the retail environment is changing rapidly and with more than 250 departments, Harrods’ diversity is a
challenge. Managing this diversity and delivering to customers the personal service they have come to expect requires
flexibility at all levels of the business, including IT. In response to this, Harrods is currently implementing an advanced SOA-based
IT infrastructure, using Sun’s Java CAPS (Composite Application Platform).
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