ERP applications play a central role in maintaining the health of large

companies. However, for many organizations with aging systems, Year 2000

concerns prompted them to replace their legacy

applications because of the difficulty of renovating

homegrown or heavily customized vendor code.

Beyond resolution of Y2K problems, replacing

legacy systems with modern, packaged ERP

applications carries many other advantages. The most

obvious is that the modern technology foundation of

current ERP products allows companies to take

advantage of multi-tier, open systems architectures,

which in turn makes Web and third-party software

HydrilENHANCESFinancial andSales Analysis

Using WorldMARTand SNAPpacks

Organization: Hydril

Profile: World leader in supply tooling to the oil and gasexploration industry

Headquarters: Houston, Texas

The Challenge: To migrate its AS/400-based enterprise systems tothe J.D. Edwards World package

Results: Users now have more sophisticated reporting and analysissystems for managing their extensive product lines and globaloperations

Information Builders’ Tools: SNAPpack and WorldMART for J.D.Edwards

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A N A LY T I C A L A P P L I C A T I O N SF I N A N C I A L A N A LY S I S

22 I N F O R M A T I O N B U I L D E R S N E W S

Diane Furst, Hydril’s project

manager for the Information

Builders implementation, notes that

the company’s needs have grown

more sophisticated with the recent

growth of their business...requiring

a more robust reporting solution for

their users

integration possible. Additionally, because most of

the modern ERP packages are more functional than

their legacy counterparts, maintenance burdens are

lower because there is less customized code to

manage.Yet, in some cases, it can be a challenge to duplicate the

functionality of the legacy system when migrating to a newERP package. At Hydril, a Houston-based world leader insupply tooling to the oil and gas exploration industry, thechallenge was twofold: maintaining a sales analysis systemwhen the company migrated its AS/400-basedenterprise systems from the ComputerAssociates PRMS to the J.D. Edwards Worldpackage; and giving their users moresophisticated reporting and analysis systems formanaging their extensive product lines andglobal operations.

“Our move from Pansophic-based systems tothe J.D. Edwards business suite presented arequirement for a more robust reportingsolution for our users,” said Diane Furst,Hydril’s project manager for the InformationBuilders implementation. “Our reporting needshave grown even more sophisticated with therecent growth of our business. Hydril has salesoffices, authorized independent repair facilities,and manufacturer’s representatives throughoutthe world. With such a globally distributedorganization, it was critical that ourheadquarters and field staff have the ability toslice and dice data to answer queries such as which regionsor product lines are growing the fastest, yielding thehighest profit margins, or encountering the longestproduct shipment delays.”

Choosing the Best Solution

The J.D. Edwards migration provided Hydril with theopportunity, not only to upgrade to a state-of-the-art ERPapplication, but also to add more flexible sales and financialanalysis reporting capabilities. But because J.D. Edwardsdid not offer sales analysis modules, Hydril had to look foran effective third-party solution.

Furst’s exploration for technology options in the reportingarea led her to Information Builders’ SNAPpack andWorldMART products for J.D. Edwards. SNAPpack isInformation Builders’ suite of integrated reportingsolutions for J.D. Edwards. WorldMART a prepackaged,analytical datamart application, developed in partnershipwith J.D. Edwards and consisting of an integrated set oftools for data access, data migration, and analysis.WorldMART’s sales analysis modules enable executives

to optimize their sales and marketing efforts by providingaccess to significant information about customer andproduct sales performance. Executives can quickly viewpatterns, and much more. WorldMART’s financial moduleenables CFOs, CEOs, and profit center managers toanalyze their data for strategic planning and identifybusiness hot spots.

“Our first option was to acquire a proven reportingsolution,” Furst continued. “After Information Buildersdemonstrated WorldMART to us, we immediatelydetermined that an analytical datamart strategy wouldbetter meet our information needs.” Hydril chose theWorldMART financial and sales applications and theSNAPpack products to help meet their IT challenge.“WorldMART met 85 to 90 percent of Hydril’srequirements right out of the box,” said Furst. “The last 10

to 15 percent has been for the customization required todeliver Hydril’s own business views of the information.WorldMART proved a good match because it uses J.D.Edwards’ own data model, and provides security that issimilar to what we were implementing with the Worldpackage.”

Besides providing a replacement for their legacy salesand financial reporting system, WorldMART added afriendlier interface, plus flexible drill-down capabilitiesthat enabled their field personnel and executives to getaccess to the data they needed. More importantly, itsplatform-independence will allow them to use the samereports should they migrate to J.D. Edwards OneWorldapplication.

“Hydril is currently implementing the J.D. Edwardsnetwork-centric computing version of OneWorld,” Furstcontinues. “We selected WorldMART for financial andsales analysis because WorldMART is platform-independentand works with both the World and OneWorld productsfrom J.D. Edwards. We could have added more consultingto develop FASTR programs to meet our reporting

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“We selected WorldMART for financial

and sales analysis because WorldMART

is platform-independent and works with

both the World and OneWorld products

from J.D. Edwards”

- Diane Furst

ased in Houston, Texas, Pride International, Inc. isone of the world’s largest drilling contractors,performing onshore and offshore drilling and related

services in more than 15 countries. In a span of just three years, Pride has grown from a

small, domestic operation to a globalorganization with five thrivingbusiness divisions. Along with Pride’sexpansion into the global market hascome the need for better access toinformation between operations. Thisrequired enterprise-class IT solutions.

“All of a sudden, the executives atheadquarters had to oversee severalcompanies, each with its ownprocesses, policies and systems,” saysYvonne Donohoe, chief informationofficer at Pride. The highest prioritywas solving the difficulties stemmingfrom having dissimilar financialsystems and procedures. We had noeasy way to obtain a unified view ofthe operating performance of thecompany.

Exploring Technology OptionsDonohoe decided that a data martsolution would meet the company’sshort- and long-term businessrequirements for global informationconsolidations and sharing. But sheknew data warehousing would requirecareful architectural planning andextensive development work to besuccessful. She also knew that building such systems fromscratch would be a massive undertaking, which is why somany companies are turning to packaged data martsolutions. So, instead of creating a new system, sheconcentrated her efforts on finding a packaged data martsolution that could be quickly linked to the J.D. EdwardsOneWorld financial system already in place at Pride.“There were three potential data marts available for theJ.D. Edwards environment,” continues Donohoe.“Information Builders’ WorldMART best met Pride’sbusiness requirements.”

Drilling for Data with WorldMART WorldMART is an integrated set of tools for data access,data transformation, data migration, and reporting thatInformation Builders created expressly for the J.D.Edwards application environment. In fact, the WorldMART

analytical application was designed in partnership with J.D.Edwards and uses a financial data model provided by J.D.Edwards to populate the data mart.

Donohoe arranged for a demonstration with Pride’s keyexecutives, who, she explains, “were quick to see the

benefits.” According to Donohoe,“It is essential to have a clearunderstanding of the businessrequirements and to ensure buy-infrom top-level management. Sheadvises, “If executives understandthe benefits, it’s easy to get theminvolved.” Pride’s executives,Donohoe says, were behind thesolution 100 percent. “Theyagreed that WorldMart matchedour requirements and encouragedme to move forward immediatelywith the data mart project.”

After a three-month trial periodPride determined that World-MART met its expectations, so amulti-disciplinary team of thecompany’s business analysts,Information Builders’ consultants,and IT pros shifted into high gearto fully implement the solution.

“WorldMART needs to be set upto reflect your specific organi-zation and data structures,”Donohoe adds. “But all the piecesare there, and they are alreadywell integrated. It took us a shortperiod of time to get it configured,

and the process of doing this has helped us understand howour global operations can better fit together.”

Striking Success Reflecting on their busy implementation schedule, Donohoesays the WorldMart project was a success due to the closeinvolvement of the executive team. With WorldMART,Pride now has an easy way to obtain a unified view of itsoperating performance.

Donohoe and the Pride team will soon turn their attentionto the next focus for WorldMART, which will be to workwith Pride’s executives to build into WorldMART the abilityto track operations globally. This next step will help themcreate a scorecard for their business that will also let themtrack key information on corporate finances, HR,equipment, and projects over time.

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“WorldMART needs to be set

up to reflect your specific

organization and data

structures...but all the

pieces are there, and they

are already well integrated”- Yvonne Donohoe,

Chief Information Officer, Pride

International

WorldMART Data Mart EnrichesPride International’s Financial Analysis

B

requirements, but this would not havebeen the most efficient or cost-effectivesolution. The FASTR method wouldhave created twice as much work sincethe reports would need to be developeda second time in OneWorld.”

Fueling the Project

Once Hydril made its decision,implementation kicked into high gear.Hydril formed an implementation teamto expedite this project, and sent 15power users for SNAP-pack training.“The students were chosen from the400-plus J.D. Edwards users andrepresent most Hydril divisions anddepartments, according to JamesCarmean, an Information Builderssenior technical rep. These power userswill use SNAPpack to develop mission-critical reports.

The Hydril implementation beganwith setting up a managed reportingenvironment with SNAPpacks, andthen followed with the configurationand customization of WorldMART’ssales and financial applications.Reflecting on their aggressiveimplementation schedule, Furst saysthat the projects have been successfulbecause of the close involvement ofboth Hydril and Information Buildersin the customization and design of theirsystems.

“We went live with our J.D. Edwardstransaction system over Memorial Dayweekend. Just three months later, wewent live with WorldMART. We wereable to maintain our aggressiveschedule because both sides adhered totheir original commitments and remained in closecommunication throughput the project,” Furst continues.“We were impressed with Information Builders’knowledge, not only of the reporting process, but of theJ.D. Edwards application architecture and data model.”

Most importantly, Furst says they were impressed byInformation Builders’ willingness to expand the scope ofthe project and the scope of WorldMART when theyrequested the addition of a major feature, a productconfigurator. The Sales Analysis module of WorldMARTwas a joint application development effort by InformationBuilders and Hydril, Furst adds. This close effort resultedin the inclusion of J.D. Edwards Configurator, ContractBilling and Job Cost.

Running the World

Hydril plans to gradually deploy WorldMART’s sales andfinancial analysis modules selectively throughout theorganization, to corporate managers and its sales forcethroughout all world regions. They expect that SNAPpackand WorldMART will enable them to track their salesoperations and financial information globally.

The next step of the project will extend the WorldMARTsales and financial applications over Hydril’s corporateintranet to expand its user base in their company. “Ourgoal is to extend WorldMART’s availability to all fieldlocations, so remote managers can come in and seeinformation over our corporate WAN, Furstconcludes.”

“We were impressed with Information

Builders’ knowledge, not only of the reporting

process, but of the J.D. Edwards application

architecture and data model”

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