Problem
This client is an old established firm with a
reputation for high quality products that are recognised globally.
They have manufacturing plants in the USA and Europe and are headquartered in the UK. As part of a supply chain management re-engineering process, they were standardising on a new common global Supply Chain Management software platform.
A critical success factor for the entire project was the ability to access and consolidate data from many multiple, disparate systems including SAP and Oracle systems, and various home-grown legacy systems. This would be converted into a consistent data format and moved to the new system.
However, the data was sometimes incomplete and in many different formats and this represented a big risk to the project timescale. Cost overruns were almost inevitable.
The delay was seen as problematic; especially as an initial project to develop a hand-coded solution had failed to deliver results that could be relied upon. A decision was made to seek outside help and search for a company with the right level of skills to keep the project on track.
Solution
Following a proof of concept, ETL was selected for our experience and the capabilities of our Transformation Manager (TM) Data Integration platform. With TM we successfully discovered and mapped all the data and consolidated it into a relational database format before migrating it to the new global data structure within the supply chain database.
The project is being implemented in a staged manner so an additional challenge is to keep existing systems running until a complete switch over is possible. To enable this, we are enabling data feeds from legacy systems into the new, evolving system on a daily, and in some cases hourly, basis.
Results
TM allows data from many sources to be easily consolidated into a single, consistent format. For this client, this means they are able to manage their staged implementation whilst keeping their businesses running efficiently.
The transition should be relatively painless and once completed, will drive improved efficiencies through consistency and reliability afforded by a single set of data standards.
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