Mark Linder and Tim Ratliff, special contributors, Supply Chain Management Review
In August, 2007, when HD Supply and its portfolio of businesses was sold by The Home Depot to a group of private equity investors, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance, an HD Supply business and leading supplier of Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) products, had 6 months to transition all suppliers and customers from existing systems over to new platforms.
“Not only did we have to move quickly, but it was critically important that we maintained business continuity with our customers and suppliers,” says Mark Linder, Director of e-Business, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance.
With a sophisticated and globally diverse value chain, maintaining tight business integration with high volume trading partners was mission critical for HD Supply Facilities Maintenance.
Aside from addressing the immediate tactical issues, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance also looked forward to finding an enterprise-based solution that would provide end-to-end visibility of goods flowing through both the supply and demand chains.
After a comprehensive evaluation process, the company chose Hubspan to solve the complex business integration challenges it faced.
Key Challenges for HD Supply
- Migrating over 225 integrated suppliers and 80 integrated national customers
- Completing transition to new platforms in only six months
- Maintaining business continuity through transition with customers and suppliers
- Connecting rapidly with many suppliers and customers despite differences in systems
- Obtaining full visibility of goods flowing through value chain
Transitioning the Supply Chain With the clock ticking, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance needed to move more than 225 integrated suppliers off the company’s previous legacy EDI infrastructure and onto its new sourcing platform.
“In addition to the technical integration challenges presented, we also were faced with handling the setup, testing, and production onboarding of our suppliers," says Deron Young, Senior Manager of Application Development, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance.
"We needed a complete integration solution ASAP.”
Hubspan assessed the challenge and quickly developed a solution that allowed the company to extend its new business processes to key trading partners.
“Hubspan engaged, integrated all 234 suppliers, and delivered the overall solution ahead of schedule," says Young.
"Hubspan’s technology and execution were quite impressive.”
Hubspan’s on-demand integration solution was the perfect fit for HD Supply Facilities Maintenance’s business challenge.
Comprised of hosted software, infrastructure, and a full suite of professional services, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance achieved the agility and scalability it needed to enable true business connections with its trading partners.
Saying "Yes" to Customers
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance not only sought to improve supply chain operations but also looked to the demand chain for driving competitive advantage.
“Enabling full e-Business connectivity with our national customers provides a higher level of customer service," says Mark Linder.
"Through Hubspan, our quality of integrations and speed to market sets us apart from others in the MRO space.”
As e-Procurement solutions began to proliferate, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance took a leadership position in the industry by establishing e-Commerce capabilities.
As more customers expressed interest in connecting with the company electronically, the lack of standardization between systems caused significant integration challenges.
“We quickly realised that differences in business processes created a large integration issue and selected a partner that had the e-Business sophistication to tackle any integration challenge that came our way,” Linder says.
“With Hubspan, we engage customers and prospective customers based upon their preferences for conducting e-Business."
"This provides us a huge advantage in the marketplace.”
End -to-End Visibility
In addition to HD Supply Facilities Maintenance’s goal of automating the supply and demand chains, it focused on another important objective—improving visibility of interactions with trading partners.
“To be proactive and deliver exceptional service levels, it’s just as important for us to know what didn’t happen as what did,” Linder says.
By utilising the Hubspan solution, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance has complete visibility across the enterprise of the thousands of daily transactions that occur from the doorsteps of both suppliers and customers.
The centralized management portal provides high level observation along with drill-down capability to interrogate specific message exchange.
With advanced alerts and monitoring, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance knows when the first hints of trouble arise and can respond immediately to maintain smooth operations.
Path to the Future
When selecting an integration provider, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance balanced immediate needs with the long term view of being well positioned for emerging changes in technology.
It was looking for a solutions provider with vision, broad capability and a defined roadmap that maintained technology advantages as the business environment evolves.
Hubspan’s on demand solution platform addresses the most significant trends in business integration: • As some organizations will advance in their technical capability, others will stay relatively unchanged.
This widening technology gap requires an integration platform that works just as well with legacy technology as it does with leading edge capability.
- Speed to market is becoming increasingly important in the current business environment, as such, demand for real-time information exchange is on the rise. Companies will need capability to transact in various forms of XML, custom formats, and web services.
- SOA is gaining acceptance and will continue to grow. Many trading partners will demand that B2B communications occur via SOA policies and governance.
- Security remains an important consideration and companies must support higher levels of encryption, financial compliance, and auditing.
Mark Linder is director eBusiness for HD Supply Facilities Maintenance. Tim Ratliff is senior director of marketing for Hubspan.