From Cable Systems to Sour Cream: More Examples of SOA in Action, circa 2007

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December 29, 2007

From Cable Systems to Sour Cream: More Examples of SOA in Action, circa 2007

As I noted in my recent series of posts on 2007 SOA success stories (here, here, here, and here) , this past year saw a multitude of positive stories emerging around SOA deployments. Here are some more highlights of companies that "got it" when it came to applying SOA principles in proactive places.

To speed up product roll-outs. Comcast Corporation turned to SOA techniques to integrate and wrapper literally thousands of back-end and legacy systems to provide new front-end services for the business. Comcast grew over the decades through acquisitions of local cable operators and media companies. As a result, the company has a large range of siloed applications and siloed product lines. Examples of new services launched include portals enabling wireless access for technicians, as well as a customer service portal -- both sharing and leveraging the same services. With tens of thousands of technicians on staff, just saving 15 minutes a day in productivity for each would save Comcast $100 million a year. The company’s 20,000 customer service technicians originally had to look through 10 or more applications to attempt to solve problems. Now, a unified call center and problem resolution portal not only helps its staff save time and money, but the same services are also now made available to technicians over their mobile phones as well as to customers. In addition, Comcast intends to cut turnaround times for new offerings from months to 24 hours, using SOA methods.

To unchain stovepiped systems. Albert Heijn (AH), a big retailer based in the Netherlands, lacked visibility into its supply chain, and was forced to rely on fixed replenishment schedules that were based on local demand forecasts. The company turned to a SOA-based approach to bridge its previously separated technology environments. Now, each of the chain's 720 stores connects to a central broker at AH's headquarters, which in turn connects to back-office applications. AH can now bridge previously separated application-to-application and B2B environments within a single infrastructure that also controls the supply chain. Information on each retail sale streams all the way back to suppliers. All point-of-sale data is automatically aggregated with sales data from across all stores and delivered to a centralized replenishment application. Decision makers now get replenished data every half hour to help with supply chain decisions.

To unchain supply chains. Emerson, a manufacturer, employed a service-oriented strategy that brought together the purchasing functions of 70 separate business units that purchase goods from 35,000 suppliers. Before the XML-EDI implementation, each unit communicated with its own suppliers. Now the suppliers see one organization. merson spent about $500,000 developing the hub, but reports it "has recovered those costs several times over." For example, putting 10 suppliers in the same shipping container cuts costs by 35%, and the company says it has saved millions in transport costs by consolidating shipping.

To increase retail operating efficiency. Kohls Department Store chain is employing SOA to help meet its goal of increasing profitability by five percent a year, primarily through operating efficiency. Over the past year, Marshall's department has been engaged in projects to enhance analytics and decision support, marketing and CRM, multi-channel systems, point of sale systems, and a warehouse management system. Plus, the company forged an agreement with Chase to manage its credit card business, which required closer integration with the bank's systems.

To keep from getting creamed. Daisy Brand, a leading domestic sour cream manufacturer, employed SOA to speed up the shipping processes for its highly perishable product. The company had a variety of systems and formats that tended to throw monkey wrenches into its distribution processes. Order changes, for example, span manual (fax, email, spreadsheets, etc.) and system functions (EDI, ETRP, third party freight, home-grown logistics and shipping applications), causing the process to slow and increasing spoilage costs. There were yawning gaps between systems, business processes and employee roles coupled with inevitable customer-driven changes were causing those processes to breakdown and impact the business. Implementing SOA-enabling tools, the company rebuilt its order change process to incorporate everything from a faxed order to customer EDI shipping acknowledgements to RFID product information. Daisy Brand generated a positive return on investment within six months and provided shared visibility into the order change process across groups and roles.

Posted by joemckendrick in Case Study | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us