Sterling Commerce in the limelight at Lhoist

STERLING COMMERCE, leading provider of B2B commerce solutions, has signed up Lhoist, to its newly launched, advanced business process management (BPM) platform, Sterling Integrator.

Lhoist, headquartered in Belgium, specialises in the extraction and transformation of lime and dolomite, and posts an annual turnover of $1.8 billion. As a result of a globalisation strategy, Lhoist has enjoyed significant internal and external growth in recent years. Following the acquisition of a number of plants and multi-site companies worldwide, Lhoist now counts fifty sites equipped with a range of disparate IT systems. The difficulty in managing information flow and data synchronisation between these different sites has driven the company to adopt an integration solution.

To date at Lhoist, orders and ‘master data’ (customer, product and pricing databases) have been centrally managed by an SAP system. However, delivery information such as the weight of inbound trucks has been handled by a variety of local applications. Between SAP and Lhoist’s remote locations and systems exists a tangled web of complex, non-flexible, in-house interconnections.

Through Sterling Integrator, Lhoist aims to:
• Improve and streamline its order and shipping processes to better serve large customers
• Gain a single view of its numerous activities (industry and applications)
• Reduce manual processes required to validate and ship orders
• Automate the flow of information between its central SAP system and different local applications

As a user of Connect:Direct, Sterling Commerce’s secured and automated data exchange solution, Lhoist initially contacted Sterling Commerce to review the possibilities of optimising its existing infrastructure. A study of the company’s existing IT systems highlighted a need for data and applications integration. Sterling Integrator provides the platform to support both enterprise application integration (EAI) and B2B integration, and delivers a business process-centric approach to integration.

Sterling Integrator is a next-generation integration platform that automates the flow of information between employees, legacy infrastructure, enterprise applications and B2B commerce environments. It makes companies easier to do business with, whilst also helping cut costs, accelerate response times and achieve tighter business collaboration, ultimately enabling enhanced customer service. Sterling Integrator is designed and built from the ground up on a J2EE platform.

Enabling real-time transfer of information
In its initial stage of implementation, commencing December 2002, Lhoist aims to enable the transfer of information in real-time by integrating existing applications with remote sites, starting with Poland, Germany and Czechoslovakia, to be followed by the other European sites and then extending to the USA.

Sterling Integrator allows 100 per cent automation of the flow of data between the central SAP system (outsourced with IBM) and the local sites, allowing the free exchange of information between the central system and the local systems. The common references contained in the SAP system (customer, product and pricing databases, etc.) will be accessible from the various sites, while the central site will dispatch orders locally, and the local sites will feed back information regarding deliveries.

In the second stage of implementation, Lhoist plans to integrate the human infrastructure exception handling capability into its automated processes. Sterling Integrator’s exceptions handling function includes an alarm system that warns the decision maker or an operator when an unexpected situation or an error requires manual intervention.

Luc Renders, IT Operations Manager from Lhoist said: “Sterling Integrator’s exception handling functionality appealed to us greatly. Via a web interface, the user can process exceptional cases or correct errors manually, to keep the supply chain truly fluid. This is a major plus compared to most of the solutions now available on the market. The modular approach of Sterling Integrator allows us to reply to urgent requirements in record time. In less than three months, Sterling Commerce has enabled the automated integration of all our business processes and applications in Poland, Germany and Czechoslovakia. Just as importantly, Lhoist now has a modular, strategic tool to respond to future B2B commerce needs. In the future, by simply adding appropriate functionality, Sterling Integrator will be able to satisfy any new standards-based requirement that we have and take us one step further to becoming a fully-integrated enterprise.”

Dave Robinson, Vice President EMEA of Sterling Commerce commented: “Lhoist has adopted a long-term, strategic approach to becoming a fully-integrated, extended enterprise. Sterling Integrator allows Lhoist to continue to capitalise on its existing infrastructure and systems, plus it enables the company to extend its data interchanges to include company customers and partners.”

Details of Lhoist can be found on their excellent and beautifully designed website.

Lhoist, Saint-Jean-des-Bois, B-1342 Limelette. Tel: +32 10 23 07 11; fax: +32 10 23 09 50; e-mail: info@lhoist.com; www.lhoist.com

Sterling Commerce, 1 Longwalk Road, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Mddx. UB11 1VB. Tel: 020 8867 8239; fax: 020 8867 8001; www.sterlingcommerce.com/emea; e-mail: linda_clifford@stercomm.com. Contact: Linda Clifford.

IM@T Online, February 2003