Project ASTRA saves the day

With IT systems that were almost 12 years old and built on technologies that were about to become unsupported, Intertek had no option but to implement an entirely new IT solution. By Michael Barber.

Intertek Group is a leading international testing, inspection and certification organisation, which assesses customers’ products and commodities against a wide range of safety, regulatory, quality and performance standards. Intertek has over 280 laboratories with more than 12,000 employees around the world.

In 2002, the Foreign Trade Standards Division (FTS) of Intertek decided that they needed a new information-technology solution to run their business. This new system would replace the core business systems in use internally, as well as facilitate e-business with external customers and suppliers.

With a total of 1,000 employees globally, FTS helps governments, standards bodies and customs departments to check that import duty is properly declared and paid, and that imports comply with their safety and other standards. FTS inspects and, where appropriate, tests products and commodities in the country of export before they are shipped.

Initially, FTS set out to rationalise its core business processes, seeking to improve productivity, and hence further reduce its cost base. This exercise was conducted by an external process consultancy that concluded that no significant gains could be made without a complete overhaul of the existing technology in use. The consultancy also recommended the migration of the aging distributed systems to a new centralised internet-based solution, coupled with the introduction of workflow and document imaging solutions. FTS agreed and set out to identify a solution that suited their needs.

The main limitations of previous IT systems can be summarised as follows:

Previous IT systems were almost 12 years old and built on technologies that were about to become unsupported;
New offices required expensive and dedicated hardware;
Staff training costs were exceptionally high;
Systems were developed prior to e-business advances and therefore not suitable for supporting new e-business opportunities;
Systems relied heavily on paper-based workflow. This slowed the business down and made it difficult to comply with tight turnaround times;
Systems were built for a business model that had changed significantly over the 12 years that they were in use. New functionality was added as required, but the systems were no longer an ideal fit for the business and became inefficient and difficult to maintain.

The solution

To move FTS forward, project ASTRA (Advanced System for Trade Assessment) was launched with the key business objectives determined as: increasing efficiencies hence reducing costs; gaining competitive advantage by providing more customer solutions and being able to rapidly service their requests; introducing new systems that enabled suppliers to transact fully with FTS offices via the internet; reducing training costs and improving the quality of training overall; and deploying flexible systems that enable the business to be more reactive to the changing dynamics of the marketplace.

The ASTRA project replaced two 12-year-old major business systems, and about six minor ones. The previous systems were built using Oracle Forms and Reports over an Oracle 7.3 database. These systems were deployed on SCO UNIX Intel servers and Windows PCs. Each office worked with all other FTS offices via phone calls, transfer of transactional CSV data files and faxing/e-mailing of all associated documentation required to process an order. Given the complexities of time zones and remote locations, this was no easy task and was, at times, inefficient.

Existing servers in individual offices were decommissioned and replaced by the use of a set of central servers located in a secure data centre in the UK. These new servers were made accessible via both corporate networks and web portals.

ASTRA delivered a single, end-to-end, fully integrated business solution covering all operational aspects of the business up to accounting. Accounting systems would be centralised and upgraded as a part of a parallel project, with appropriate ASTRA interfaces developed. Using ASTRA, the plan was that all FTS offices would be able to connect to one central workflow driven solution. This solution would also result in all associated documentation being available online for any relevant party to review. It was also to be opened up to the FTS customer and supplier base via a secure portal, with importers, exporters, governments and inspectors able to process and review their work orders online.

Project initiation

A search for appropriate software suppliers identified nine companies. A comprehensive invitation to tender (ITT) document was prepared. This ITT covered, amongst other items, a background to the project, project scope and objectives, project budget range, format for responses, qualification criteria for suppliers, detailed system functionality requirements, office locations and existing communication links, business volumes, existing top-level database schema and details on systems to interface with.

The ITT was submitted to the nine selected companies. Eight companies chose to respond with a bid, with one dropping out because they could not meet the project budget. After a careful review of the tenders, an external systems-integration company was chosen to develop the new software. Kainos Software proposed that they would build a bespoke solution using Java technologies (Java Struts, JSP and Borland J2ee application server) over an Oracle 9i database. This solution would use Oracle iFS for document management and Kainos Workflow for workflow requirements.

Project sponsorship was to be provided by the CEO of the FTS division, Robert Dilworth, programme management by Michael Barber, the FTS IT director, and steering group chair by the FTS quality director. A project team was then formed containing a full-time IT project manager, four operations managers, the FTS finance director and the FTS marketing director. This team was formed within a month of the project concept being approved and took business ownership of the project from an early stage in the tender cycle.

The project itself was split into five discrete phases: design, development, testing, implementation and benefits realisation. Each phase was to be fully monitored and assessed prior to the next phase commencing. The project development phase was not broken down further, as all core systems had to be replaced and this could not be done through a phased delivery without significant incremental costs for complex interfaces. However, the implementation was phased in to reduce risks with offices being rolled out over a period of a year. The success of each rollout was to be reviewed before the next was started, ensuring that no office was left with a system that compromised the business.

Design

Although FTS runs on standard operating procedures globally, through early design workshops it became apparent that there were many local variations on how these procedures were adapted to suit office size and culture across the group. Users were flown in from all parts of the globe to take part in the knowledge and innovation capture for the design process. In total, over 40 global users took part in the many individual workshop sessions – a complex and time consuming exercise, but an essential one as the outcome of the project was later to prove. These workshops took place over a period of three months, with each stage being fully documented and turned into design documents for review and further iteration. The design teams who had since been repatriated mostly conducted the review process. However, this resulted in the flow of feedback not being as seamless as it could have been, costing the project a two-month overrun in the design phase; an unfortunate consequence of using a global design team whose members also had day jobs. It was accepted up front that this would be an issue, but as the FTS business was also growing alongside the project’s development, the best people simply could not be seconded to the project for a prolonged period of time.

Development

Once out of the design phase the project went back on track with most of the effort being directed towards building the software solution and underlying infrastructure. This process required a significant amount of feedback from FTS to the software house to address design specifics as the development evolved. Apart from being time consuming, this phase went reasonably well.

While the software was being built the FTS project team redirected their energies to sourcing a hardware provider and data centre to host the ASTRA system. This again resulted in another ITT that went out to five major suppliers. Partners of IBM, SUN and HP were invited to bid for the solution. In this case, the tender was awarded to Morse systems, with a partner data centre being chosen to host the solution. Morse provided and commissioned the complete hardware and network solution, providing 24x7 monitoring to manage ASTRA post implementation. The design of the infrastructure solution and its subsequent implementation went very well, with all systems ready and operational on day one.

The biggest delay during this phase of the project was the hand over of control from the implementation consultancy team to the managed services team, which takes a lot of co-ordination.

Testing

Finally, after all the months of planning, designing and building the system, we had reached the testing phase. This was without doubt the most nerve-racking part of the project. Will the system function as designed on paper? Will it meet users’ expectations? Will it be bug free? The answer to all of these is, of course not. Designing something on paper is never trivial, especially with a geographically diverse design team reviewing the final versions, but the reality was not so far away from the requirements. The project did, however, enter a period of planned for change control during, and post, user-acceptance testing to tighten up on the functionality prior to go live in the chosen pilot site.

User-acceptance testing was carried out using a set of user-acceptance-test scripts and load testing scripts that had been developed in parallel to the software development phase. These were initially constructed using the design documentation and evolved to cover any potential tests that the business believed were needed. Multiple tests were performed by users who were selected from both the original design teams as well as those with limited experience of the design. These teams were flown to the UK to work in a test environment for a given period of time. After they had been repatriated post testing they were then used remotely to sign off on any bug fixes or new software that had been developed from the test phase. This had the added advantage of testing the application over remote links in different countries.

Implementation

The first few weeks of the pilot were again a fraught period with as yet undiscovered bugs materialising and new features being requested as users became more comfortable with the system. This was a period of frantic activity for the internal and external IT teams, but they survived and the system was stabilised and performance tuned over the next two months. Once matured in the initial pilot site, ASTRA was ready for rollout across the balance of the FTS offices. At the time of writing this report, the system is now live in over 50 per cent of FTS offices.

The next few months will see the rollout of further sites and the introduction of portal functionality. This new functionality will allow clients to place orders online, track the status of their orders and view associated reports as required. The portal will also allow third-party inspectors to accept their inspection jobs online, print out any required online documents and update the results of any inspection activity. FTS staff, through manual paper interaction, previously managed all of these processes. This is the most exciting part of ASTRA and is an area that will add significant benefit to the business by providing improved customer service, freeing up scarce resource, reducing costs on communication and improving turnaround times across overall business processes.

Benefits realisation

This is the one area of a project that IT likes to forget about post project approval, but an area that makes or breaks the project’s success. FTS stayed focused on the benefits all the way through the project design and delivery, and is now analysing the project’s success based on the delivery of these benefits, as well as considering any previously unexpected benefits.

Overall, this project has enabled the business to become extremely flexible. FTS has an extremely dynamic business model with the gain of government contracts resulting in offices being opened on a regular basis. ASTRA has made this process much simpler and less expensive with new offices only now requiring internet access and some basic hardware. User counts in office can now be adjusted easily without high associated costs. FTS offices work much more seamlessly with each other, reducing delays and inter-office communications, and improving teamwork.

Improved customer service is also high on the agenda, with customers able to access complete and accurate information on demand. Customers have read-only access to parts of the system to track the progress of their clearance certificates online.

Furthermore, the fact that data and images no longer have to be manually sent, at a high cost, between geographically remote FTS offices has resulted in significant efficiency and cost savings. Overall efficiency savings in this area alone are expected to be in the range of five per cent, with the maximum benefit only being attained once all offices are using ASTRA. Communication costs have already been reduced by up to $50,000 a month.

Historically, FTS has also been inhibited from bringing new services to market due to the distributed nature of its systems. With one central system, the division is now in a position to offer better services to customers and to launch new products.

Staff costs will also be reduced as the overall process is made much more efficient and as handling of standard queries can be performed online by clients and internal staff in remote offices. Efficiency savings are currently forecast at 15 per cent.

The use of scanning technology also eliminates the need for microfilming, photocopying and paper, and even more importantly communications costs will reduce as paper is no longer faxed or couriered across the world. In essence, the cost per unit of issuing a clearance certificate will reduce significantly.

As all data will now reside in one single location, management will have ready access to a set of reports giving a global picture of the business rather than laboriously trying to solicit and consolidate reports from remote locations. This will ensure that business data is current and accurate.

With a workflow solution in place, managers will also be able to rapidly identify process bottlenecks anywhere in the organisation (by reviewing queues), and re-allocate idle resource in other offices to service queues that are building up.

Overall, ASTRA has transformed the way that FTS runs its business and new ways to adapt the business processes are being suggested every week from users.

Lessons learnt

As with any project of this magnitude, regardless of extensive planning and foresight, lessons are always learnt. The key is to admit these, analyse them and ensure that in subsequent projects you do not repeat them.

One of the main items that FTS would like to have resolved better was the secondment of expert business resource to the project. At the very early stages of the project the team identified the needs and approached the business with a shopping list, and then compromised. They listened to the business arguments and understood the realities and accepted part-time resource. This resulted in a prolonged design phase, with not all of the functionality gaps being identified in the user-testing phases. I would highly recommend being intransigent on this subject and fighting harder for the correct resource to be fully seconded for the duration of the project.

Another lesson from the project surrounded the freeing up IT resources to engage in the project. Several new full-time senior IT resources were recruited specifically for the project, but the intention was to bring the balance of the IT team on board over the development period to enable them to take up support after the project was put live. This proved to be unrealistic as the business continued to grow alongside the project’s development, resulting in strong demands on the rest of the IT team. FTS solved this by extending the support period with the software house that delivered the project, but that impacted on the project budget – fortunately there was enough head room to absorb this. I would say that in most cases this is the reality – existing teams are usually over-stretched and expecting them to free up significant time prior to the legacy systems being decommissioned is unrealistic.

The final lesson we learnt was that communications links from some countries in the world are just not suitable for deploying an internet-based solution. Expensive bandwidth and high latency makes the solution unworkable. We had planned for this in the project with some offices in Africa having a local database instance selectively replicated back to the central system. What we had not anticipated in all cases was the affect on the usability of the application on what we saw as minor application delays in redrawing screens, which added nearly an hour and a half to the keying time.

It is essential to ensure that the worst-case scenario is assumed when designing an application for deployment on a global basis.

The end product

The final solution has been the implementation of a case-management system. The key technologies of the system were full web enablement, to enable connectivity from anywhere; workflow, to manage the business processes; and document management, to handle the storage and retrieval of information. ASTRA has provided FTS offices worldwide with immediate access to all the information and documentation necessary to process a final clearance certificate for customers. The workflow application ensures that each step of the process is completed to schedule and by the appropriate personnel.

Michael Barber is chief information officer, Intertek Group