Cargill
Sugar modernises iSeries applications the easy
way
Background
Cargill is
an international manufacturer, processor and distributor
of agricultural, food, financial and industrial
products and services, with 90,000 employees in
57 countries. The company provides customer solutions
in supply chain management, food applications
and health and nutrition.
The Cargill Sugar business unit, headquartered
in Geneva, Switzerland employs 140 people across
16 countries. Cargill Sugar handles the origination,
financing, freighting and marketing of raw and
refined sugar, shipping over 6.5 million metric
tonnes of sugar annually.
Challenge
Like other Cargill business units the Sugar group
in Geneva has used Advantage 2E (formerly COOL:2E
and Synon) from Computer Associates to rapidly
develop iSeries (AS/400) applications to meet
Cargill’s specific requirements. The key
business application consisting of 2000 programs,
is also used by other Cargill Sugar locations
and other Geneva-based Cargill businesses, such
as grain trading and ocean transportation.
The system supports commodity and futures contracts
and their underlying execution processes, risk
exposure, invoicing, accounting and freight contracts
and execution workflow applications. The application
has been extended over recent years with the development
and integration of Lotus Domino-based workflow
applications.
An internal review of these iSeries applications
found the cost of redeveloping or customizing
a new package solution was not justified, confirming
the iSeries remained a viable platform if some
key issues could be addressed. Business users
familiar with graphical interfaces perceived the
iSeries 5250 applications as difficult to use
and obsolete. New users found the applications
hard to learn. The iSeries applications also needed
to seamlessly integrate with web-based applications.
These issues needed to be addressed if Geneva
management were to commit to deploying the applications
remotely.
Solution
Cargill Sugar’s IT Manager, David Taglialatela,
began the search for modernization solutions and
found newlook. “We
downloaded the evaluation version and were impressed
with the graphical interface generated as soon
as the software was installed. Also of interest
was newlook’s web deployment
support, which we needed for simplified deployment
across our remote sites. We showed the newlook
equivalent of our contract entry screen to an
experienced user. He was really impressed and
thought it was a new system!”
David embarked on a newlook
pilot, which included 15 users located in the
Geneva and Minneapolis offices.
"Although newlook allowed
us to redesign only selected screens while leaving
the bulk of them automatically recognized by its
dynamic engine, we took the approach of redesigning
all screens as there were a lot of opportunities
to improve business user productivity. The concept
is very easy to understand, and the interface
is very intuitive. looksoftware’s
Australian based support and consulting team quickly
resolved any issues we encountered.”
The team quickly mastered newlook’s
refacing tools and produced 700 screen designs
in a month. Initially there was no requirement
for many of newlook’s more
advanced features, so David’s team did not
even require training, however, looksoftware
strongly recommends all customers attend the four
day training course to ensure correct use of newlook’s
features.
Pilot users were asked to use the web-deployed
newlook browser-based interface,
instead of their traditional emulator. At the
end of the one-month pilot, the decision to roll
out the newlook solution was
unanimous.
The CFO of Cargill International S.A. commented,
"This is fantastic! I fully support this
project for all our iSeries users. I see significant
productivity improvements that will make our iSeries
applications welcomed by our users.”
Another productivity benefit is application integration.
newlook allows iSeries applications
to integrate easily with other desktop, network,
server and web-based applications. Intranet-based
Domino applications are popular with iSeries customers
but completely separate from typical iSeries applications.
David said, "Our users commonly need
to access Domino information from the iSeries
application. It was painful for these users to
have to repeatedly connect to our intranet open
the Domino application and find the relevant document.
Now, they simply click on a link provided on the
newlook iSeries interface and
it directly opens the corresponding document in
the Domino application. Time saved!”
The ability to easily deploy the iSeries applications
across the web to its global offices will reduce
Cargill’s costs. David said, "Costs
will reduce because there is no need to install
anything on the PC or manage updates."
Cargill has also decided to use newlook
for it’s Egyptian operation. David commented,
“Our iSeries applications which might
have looked obsolete 3 years ago will now be enhanced
to include a delivery order system and support
for a distribution business. Egyptian based users
will never see a green screen.” David
summarizes Cargill Sugar’s experience to
date as a “relatively simple project,
which has significantly changed people’s
acceptance of the iSeries and reduced our application
deployment costs.”
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