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J. R. Simplot Company needed a better way to support the technology requirements of its fast-growing agribusinesses. Custom point-to-point integrations between its J.D. Edwards enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and a growing number of third-party applications were taking too much time to develop. The Simplot Company’s enterprise data warehouse and reporting capabilities were struggling to keep up with the increasing business needs. So, Simplot adopted an enterprise application integration solution and data warehouse and reporting solution based on Microsoft® technologies. As a result, the time to implement integrations has been cut from months to weeks. The time to create new reports has been cut from weeks to days. By using the Microsoft Application Platform, Simplot can deliver solutions more efficiently to meet growing business requirements and improve customer service.
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Document Sample
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
Customer Solution Case Study
Agribusiness Concern Boosts Customer
Responsiveness with EAI/EDI Solution
Overview “In agribusiness, we have to differentiate ourselves on
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Agriculture, Manufacturing
the basis of customer service and cost. The Microsoft
Application Platform is enabling us to do that more
Customer Profile
The J.R. Simplot Company, based in Boise,
effectively.”
Idaho, and with 12,000 employees, is an Roger Parks, Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, J.R. Simplot
agribusiness concern operating throughout Company
the United States, Canada, Australia, and
Mexico.
J. R. Simplot Company needed a better way to support the
technology requirements of its fast-growing agribusinesses. Custom
Business Situation
Simplot needed better ways to integrate its
point-to-point integrations between its J.D. Edwards enterprise
J.D. Edwards ERP system with third-party resource planning (ERP) software and a growing number of third-
applications and to work with its trading
partners, and to better organize its
party applications were taking too much time to develop. The
enterprise data. Simplot Company’s enterprise data warehouse and reporting
Solution
capabilities were struggling to keep up with the increasing business
Simplot adopted a solution based on needs. So, Simplot adopted an enterprise application integration
Microsoft® BizTalk® Server and SQL
Server™ to streamline internal integration,
solution and data warehouse and reporting solution based on
facilitate integration with customers and Microsoft® technologies. As a result, the time to implement
suppliers, and boost reporting abilities.
integrations has been cut from months to weeks. The time to create
Benefits new reports has been cut from weeks to days. By using the
Integration time cut from months to
weeks
Microsoft Application Platform, Simplot can deliver solutions more
Report creation cut from weeks to days efficiently to meet growing business requirements and improve
Provides flexible supply chain
coordination
customer service.
Reduces risk for large, fast-growing
business
Boosts customer responsiveness
“The design review Situation Contract Management System to implement
The J.R. Simplot Company likes to describe pricing and contract information for its
confirmed that SQL itself as “bringing earth’s resources to life”. dealings with food brokers and customers.
Server could support our The private agribusiness operates farms and Simplot quickly had several such special-
ranches, potato and vegetable processing purpose third-party applications, each of
needs for enterprise plants, agricultural fertilizer production, and which had to be custom-integrated with J.D.
performance, scalability, services for growers and farmers. One of the Edwards.
things that J.R. Simplot grows best isn’t on
and data warehouse that list: itself. With rapidly increasing annual Those custom integrations were time
reporting.” revenues now at U.S.$3.4 billion, the consuming, each taking from hundreds of
company is one of the largest and fastest- hours up to 2,000 hours to implement. And
Roger Parks, Vice President of Information growing private businesses in the United those investments weren’t one-time
Technology and Chief Information Officer, States. propositions. Each time either the third-party
J.R. Simplot Company applications or J.D. Edwards ERP software
As its business has grown, Simplot has was upgraded, Simplot had to update the
updated its technology infrastructure to keep integration.
up. In the run-up to the year 2000, the
company had a series of separate non- “We knew that as we increased our use of
integrated systems in its various divisions, third-party applications with J.D. Edwards, the
hindering the ability to aggregate data into a situation would quickly become untenable,”
single, comprehensive financial view of the says Parks. “We would have to either add
entire enterprise, as well as to share data staff or consider outsourcing to manage the
from division to division. The company connections. We were looking at spending up
conducted a review of five leading enterprise to hundreds of thousands of dollars for these
resource planning (ERP) systems and chose integrations.”
J.D. Edwards.
The second issue facing the company
For its J.D. Edwards operating platform, concerned the thousands of electronic
Simplot chose the IBM iSeries model 830, business-to-business messages it used every
with DB2 as the database. At the time, Roger day. These messages consist of customer
Parks, Vice President of Information orders, order confirmations, warehouse
Technology and Chief Information Officer, and shipping notices, and inventory information,
his colleagues felt that J.D. Edwards was the as well as transportation and shipment
most cost-effective platform to run a single location information, all of which must be
instance of the solution for their 1,000 passed to the J.D. Edwards ERP software.
simultaneous users.
One popular choice for doing this through
As the company continued to work with its electronic data interchange (EDI) was
J.D. Edwards solution, it identified two issues Gentran software by Sterling Commerce. This
to address. The first concerned integration of approach had been in place at the Simplot
third-party applications. Because of the Company for years, but the software was
distinctive nature of its diverse businesses, scheduled to lose support on the iSeries
Simplot needed to augment its J.D. Edwards platform. The replacement offering, GIS,
ERP software with specialty third-party would have required an implementation as
applications, such as IBM’s Data Collection an enterprise application integration (EAI)
System for the warehouse management tool, but it wasn’t on the company’s short list
needs of its Food Group, and the I-Many for such tools.
“Our developers find Business messaging was an important part of BizTalk Server 2006 includes 23 application
the company’s vision. It saw coordination of and technology adapters in the box for
BizTalk Server extremely supply-chain activities, through business connecting to legacy systems (mainframe and
intuitive, with tools that messaging, as crucial to many of its mid-range) and line-of-business applications—
commodity-based businesses. And it saw including the J.D. Edwards software that
automate much of the connectivity with customers and supply-chain Simplot uses. Simplot decided that BizTalk
development process partners—especially when those customers Server would provide the scalability the
and partners didn’t support EDI—as crucial company needed to support its growing
and streamline the rest. for the company’s continued and increased number of integrations, as well as support an
An integration process competitiveness. additional ERP system that Simplot was
running for one of its lines of business.
that formerly took Simplot had also been working with a BizTalk Server would also provide flexibility
months has been cut to business-to-business third-party managed for handling EDI over the Internet. As an
services provider, InterTrade, which had added bonus, BizTalk Server cost much less
weeks.” sharply reduced the company’s cost of than a competitive solution that the company
Roger Parks, Vice President of Information transmitting and receiving EDI messages over considered.
Technology and Chief Information Officer, the Internet. Simplot also saw the use of
J.R. Simplot Company XML-based messaging and the exchange of The BizTalk Server solution runs on a load-
XML-based documents with customers, balanced pair of 64-bit Hewlett-Packard
suppliers, service providers and others, as ProLiant DL385 computers, configured in an
part of its business messaging vision. Steve active-active cluster for high availability. A
Pochardt, IT Director of Enterprise separate pair of ProLiant computers hosts an
Performance Optimization, Simplot, was active-active cluster of Microsoft SQL Server™
tasked with working with InterTrade and 2005, the database software for BizTalk
Simplot’s other business-to-business partners Server.
to identify an integration solution.
The solution replaces the previous iSeries-
Solution based Gentran EDI software with a single
The consensus solution that emerged was inbound and single outbound BizTalk Server
based on Microsoft® BizTalk® Server 2006, orchestration based on XML to move
the business process management server business messaging information between J.D.
that enables companies to automate and Edwards and Simplot’s trading partners.
optimize business processes. About 35 EDI maps support the
orchestrations. A scheduler kicks off EDI
To address the integration issue, Simplot transactions every 15 minutes. The solution
decided that BizTalk Server 2006, as an EAI currently supports 1.1 million transactions
tool, would serve as a single integration point annually. “It’s barely causing BizTalk Server
between the J.D. Edwards software and the to churn,” says Jo McCarthy, IT Architect,
company’s third-party applications, Simplot.
eliminating the need to manage a growing
number of custom integrations. And Simplot To address their growing enterprise data
engaged InterTrade to assist in transitioning warehousing issue, Simplot hosted Microsoft
its EDI transactions and business messaging for a two-day architecture design session to
to BizTalk Server 2006, because InterTrade review its existing data architecture and to
had already helped another client with the discuss alternatives. “The design review
same transition. considered our current use of DB2,” says
Parks. “It also confirmed that SQL Server
“We expect our new could support our needs for enterprise as quickly as the company’s lines of
performance, scalability, and data warehouse businesses need them, eliminating a
reports will also enable reporting.” potential drag on the company’s ability to
our decision makers to adopt and maintain business solutions that
Simplot recently moved its data warehouse deliver competitive advantage.
more easily analyze key from DB2 to a pair of clustered computers
business issues.” hosting SQL Server 2005. The company is in Report Creation Cut from Weeks to
the process of converting its reporting system Days
Roger Parks, Vice President of Information to SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. Now, As it moves to adopt the new data warehouse
Technology and Chief Information Officer, it’s exploring Microsoft ProClarity® and and reporting solution, Simplot sees a range
J.R. Simplot Company Microsoft Office PerformancePoint™ Server to of additional benefits. Reports that formerly
provide analytical capability for business took two weeks or more to create can now be
intelligence, such as dashboards with key created in days, reducing the burden on the
performance indicators and balanced IT department and getting reports into the
scorecards. hands of business users much faster than
before.
Benefits
Simplot has seen drastic reductions in the Faster report creation also means that
time and cost of implementing integrations business users will have a broader range of
between J.D. Edwards and its third-party reports with which to work, providing greater
solutions and in the time it takes to produce support for decision-making. “We expect our
reports for business users. Best of all, the new reports will also enable our decision
new solution is a foundation for an end-to- makers to more easily analyze key business
end supplier-to-customer value chain that will issues,” says Parks. “As the volume of data
help to increase customer service while grows, the ability to manage and navigate
decreasing costs. through the increased data with enhanced
insight is extremely important to our business
Integration Time Cut from Months to decision makers.”
Weeks
Simplot wanted to reduce the thousands of Reduces Risk for Large, Fast-Growing
person-hours it took to manage its growing Business
range of point-to-point connections among Simplot views its new solution, based on
applications. With BizTalk Server, it has the BizTalk Server and SQL Server, as a safe
potential to accomplish this. choice for a large and fast-growing business.
“With BizTalk Server, we replace the unique, “From a business standpoint, we’re lowering
custom connections we needed for each our risk by moving to BizTalk Server and SQL
third-party application communicating with Server,” says Pochardt. “We are moving to
J.D. Edwards,” says Parks. “Our developers highly supported, cost-effective solutions with
find BizTalk Server extremely intuitive, with high availability and fault tolerance. If our
tools that automate much of the business-to-business data stream is ever held
development process and streamline the up for any reason, the highly efficient
rest. An integration process that formerly took processing of BizTalk Server means we can
months has been cut to weeks.” catch up with those transactions quickly,
always within our 15-minute windows. And if
And that in turn means that Simplot’s IT there’s a longer holdup, BizTalk Server will let
department can add and update connections us catch up in a single cycle.”
For More Information Boosts Customer Responsiveness Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
For more information about Microsoft The move to BizTalk Server and SQL Server For more information about the Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft also provides a more strategic benefit to server product portfolio, go to:
Sales Information Center at (800) 426- Simplot, according to Parks. “We see the www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx
9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Microsoft technologies providing the
Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- foundation for an end-to-end solution
2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of- enabling virtualization of our supply chain
hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone systems that range from our suppliers to our
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in customers,” says Parks. “With supply chain,
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in distribution, and customer information all
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and managed in a single, highly automated
Canada, please contact your local system, we’ll have time to work more
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information efficiently with vendors, and to provide better
using the World Wide Web, go to: service to customers. In agribusiness, we
www.microsoft.com have to differentiate ourselves on the basis of
customer service and cost. The Microsoft
For more information about J.R. Simplot Application Platform is enabling us to do that
products and services, call (208) 327- more effectively.”
3300 or visit the Web site at:
www.simplot.com For example, Simplot has cut the time
needed to react to new customer needs. “We
are able to modify our processes more
quickly to meet changing customer demands
for ordering or inventory replenishment,” says
Lynn Baker, Director of Enterprise Solution
Delivery at Simplot. “When a customer has a
particular service need, we can respond to it.
That makes us a better supplier.”
Simplot envisions similar advantages in using
BizTalk Server 2006 to deal with suppliers.
“We’re talking with our ingredient suppliers
about using the solution to align our
production schedules with theirs, to get just-
in-time deliveries that reduce our need to
maintain inventories of raw supplies,” says
Pochardt.
Software and Services Technologies
Products − Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting
− Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Services
− Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Hardware
HP ProLiant DL 385
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published September 2007
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