A Balancing Act: Managing Oracle Applications

Scott Dines

Oracle Systems Manager

scott.dines@boral.com

Boral Bricks Inc.

History and Current Operations

About Boral Bricks, Inc.

• Largest Clay Brick Manufacturer in the USA

• US Headquarters in Atlanta, GA with administrative

offices in Augusta, GA

• More than doubled in size since 1995

• 21 Plants in 8 states

• 50+ Distribution and sales offices in 11 states

• 1.5 billion brick sold FY’03;

1.6 billion brick Budget FY ‘04

• 20% Sales Growth from FY ’03 to Budget FY ’04

(Acquired largest customer Feb ’03)

• 1700+ Employees

Current Status – Oracle Deployment • Financials Live on Oracle 11i (11.5.7 plus mini-packs)

General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, & Fixed Assets

• Oracle Process Manufacturing (11.5.7 plus mini-pack I)

Production Management, Quality, Inventory, Purchasing, & Order Fulfillment

• 71 locations across Southern United States 21 Manufacturing Plants (Mining to Finished Goods) 50 Distribution and Sales Sites (23 just implemented in 4 months)

• Supporting Boral Industries and it’s subsidiaries(Six Organizations with five Sets of Books)

Boral Bricks USTILE Boral Material Technologies Inc

Boral Bricks Direct Savannah Classic Stone

• Server Hardware: HP / UX

• Wide Area: Fractional T-1 (>=256kb & >8k Cir)

• 100 GB Data Area

• Clients: both NC and PC with Windows Terminal Server for Wide Area

• 30 GB Sales Reporting Data Warehouse

• 3+ Test, Training & Acceptance Environments

Technical Configuration

Node CPU Speed MemoryDatabase 8 750 MHz 16 GBMiddle Tier 8 440 MHz 12 GB

Support for Oracle Applications at Boral Bricks

• 2 Database & 1 UNIX Administrators

• 8 Developers & Applications Support

• 2 1/2 Network, Telecommunications and

Other Technical Administration

• 2 Help Desk Support (Moving to 3 at Help Desk)

• 2 Managers ( SD & TS )

Staffing Levels and Oracle Expertise

• Staff Devoted to Oracle Support 9 System Analysts / Developers / Manager

2 Database Administrators.

• Combined working experience of staff 74 years with Oracle technology

49 years with Oracle applications

157 years with information technology

Management Team Active in IT

• Standing IT Steering Committee Consists of VP and Director level Meets every 6 - 8 weeks.

(During large projects meets every 4 weeks)

Goals and Objectives track status of current projects identify key issues facing business keep management team looking

forward with respect to technology

Major Milestones for Oracle at Boral(See Handout)

• Financials Fast Forward Oracle 10.7 Prod16.1 SC AP, GL (Nov 97) AR, FA (May 98)

Additional Sets of Books – BMTI & Boral Industries (July 98)

USTile (Feb 99) & Savannah Classic Stone (June 02)

• Process Manufacturing (Define, Build and Test) (Sept 99 to May 01)

• 10.7 to 11.5.3 upgrade (Apr 01)

• Process Manufacturing 11.5.3 (Live May 01 to Dec 01)

Production Management, Formula Management,

Quality, Inventory, Order Entry & Shipping, Purchasing,

and Costing (Finished Goods only)

• 11.5.3 to 11.5.7 (plus mini-packs) upgrade (Nov 02)

• Franklin Brick Acquisition 23 additional sites (Apr 03 to Aug 03)

Use of Consultants at Boral

Determination, Management, and Results

Our Goal with Consultants

• Only engaged for knowledge transfer and business process improvement

Never used to “do the work” Used to advise and train Boral staff Paired one-on-one with Boral

staff (IT or key User)

• Only use when Boral IT and “business” has committed resources to project (people, time, and money)

Consulting versus Internal Staffing

• Large projects; Internal Boral Staff moved out of positions and onto project team Used Consulting to train and guide

Boral Project Team Project management Boral

responsibility assisted by consulting group

Example: Process Manufacturing Project we dedicated 7 people full time (2 yrs)

Boral’s Use of Consultants

• Fast Forward Financials: Configuration 1st two sets of books on 10.7 (100 days) – Oracle Consulting

• Assist in define and build Process Manufacturing 11.0.3 (200 days) – Oracle Consulting

• 23 Reports for Process Manufacturing 11.5.3 (45 days) – Sierra Atlantic (Outsourced: India)

• Functional Assistance – 10.7 to 11.5.3 (45 days) – Oracle Consulting

Boral’s Use of Consultants

• Purchasing Configuration 11.5.3 (45 days) –SBI & Company

• OPM Customization work 11.5.3 (80 days) – Sierra Atlantic

• 1st Portal Installation (5 days) – Sierra Atlantic

• Tuning Work 11.5.3 (5 days) - Oracle Consulting

Other Lessons Learned

• Interview, interview, interview

• Be quick to fire

• Build relationships with one or two key partners, but keep talking to other vendors

• Use internal staff for majority of customization work

The Payoff

• 11.5.3 Configuration and Go Live for Process completed internally from 11.0.3 consulting work

• 11.5.7 Upgrade completed internally• Support of all custom code internal• Knowledge base of staff of custom code,

configurations and business allows us to react to changes in business

• KEY: Not dependent on any external parties to run your business

Next Steps

Future Projects

• 9i Database upgrade

• Personal Web Pages for Executive and Line Managers Containing Both KPI and Business Intelligence Data

• New Order Management

• CRM & E-commerce (Business to Business)

Everyone is looking for the “wow”“wow”.

But the “wow” factor comes from

doing the basic things right,doing the basic things right,

all the time!all the time!