New Jersey-based SunChemical Corporation, the world's largest manufacturer of printing inks, has contracted Centurion software group Solit SA to help it integrate its production, back-office and procurement systems.
The software being used for the integration is Microsoft's BizTalk Server, drawing on Solit's enterprise application integration (EAI) skills. The initial contract is worth more than R1 million, and the first phase is expected to go live at the end of April, while the overall project will take six months.
SunChemical is a multinational with annual revenues of $2,6 billion. It employs 14 000 people at more than 300 manufacturing, sales and service locations in Europe, the Caribbean and North, Central and South America. In addition it has independent agents in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
SunChemical is a long-term user of the Protean production ERP system.
However, Protean and Avantis, its procurement application, does not interface with Coda, SunChemical's primary financial system. Accordingly, SunChemical had its own, proprietary EAI technology to allow the applications to communicate, synchronise data and exchange documents. Such an approach was unwieldy, expensive to maintain and could not take advantage of new and emerging technology waves, says James Houghton, director applications and development at SunChemical.
SunChemical had learned of Solit's capabilities in Europe, where it had done significant work for other Protean clients. "Solit has extensive experience with all the products we use, and is well aligned technically for what we needed," says Houghton, "with its combination of business and technology skills, including Web development and XML (eXtensible Markup Language)."
The first implementation will be done as a pilot project at SunChemical's Watford-based European Technical Support Centre, which serves as the European data centre. Depending on its overall success, it will then be rolled out to other sites across Europe, and SunChemical ultimately aims to make the new system its corporate standard.
"We expect to have a smooth, well integrated business model, which offers us flexibility and support into the future," notes Houghton, "and which can be easily reconfigured as the business changes. BizTalk Server can serve as our tool for both EAI and B2B integration. B2B is merely the other side of EAI. The one application is internal, the other externally facing, but we can use the same tool for both functions."
Hennie Pieters, director at Solit, says the contract is endorsement of Solit's approach to international development and South African skills overall. "All of the development is being done in South Africa, using local skills. The ability to work at international rates while incurring local costs, and producing world-class work, is a factor in our favour."
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