16 April 2009

Microsoft professionals and partners are working with Canadian manufacturers to help them optimise performance and save money in a tough economic climate. Here are some of the latest developments.

With the effects of the economic crisis being felt the world over, manufacturers are looking for ways to optimise performance while cutting costs. Canada is no exception, and Microsoft is focused on supporting the country’s manufacturers through these challenging times.

“My number one focus is that we address our clients’ business problems and help them navigate in this turbulent economy as a strategic partner,” says Alex Lima, Canada and Latin America manufacturing lead in Microsoft’s worldwide industry team for manufacturing. “We have a team of professionals dedicated to managing the business development process.”

Those professionals are Eric Leduc, who manages Eastern Canada; Mark Schewe, who takes charge of Western Canada; and Rodney Umrah, who handles Central Canada.

“As elsewhere, Microsoft in Canada is dedicated to helping customers cut costs in the current economy,” says Leduc. He points to virtualisation as a way to make the most of existing processing resources, and unified communications to cut telephony costs and improve collaboration.

“SharePoint is a future business platform,” says Lima, and Leduc agrees, citing some recent conversations with customers around SharePoint as a foundational component to build on. Umrah adds that companies see real business results when deploying SharePoint for document management and for extranet to enable collaboration with suppliers and partners.

My number one focus is that we address our clients’ business problems and help them navigate in this turbulent economy as a strategic partner

Alex Lima, Microsoft  Leduc gives Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP) as an example. The maker of Ski-Doo snowmobiles and other power sport vehicles has recently invested in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to deliver its dealer extranet, implemented with the help of consultancy firm CGI, whose staff worked on the .NET elements of the solution, ensuring that it fits in with BRP’s architecture while providing value to the dealer network. The solution also delivers security features and search.

Like other manufacturers, BRP has cut back its labour force and reduced production volume to battle the current economic climate. However, the company prides itself on having migrated its ERP systems (SAP) from UNIX to Windows/SQL Server last spring and therefore decreasing the total cost of ownership of IT.

Automotive may be feeling the pinch, but Canada’s resources-based industries appear to be providing some balance. Canadian Microsoft Certified Partner eTimeMachine works to add visibility and auditability to Microsoft Project-based activities. The company’s Fred Radnoti is optimistic about investment by Canadian utility companies that are focused on improving efficiency and upgrading ageing infrastructure. He believes that energy has moved to the top of many agendas. For example, Bruce Power is building what will be Canada’s biggest wind turbine farm next door to its nuclear power station in Ontario. “Microsoft is a key technology that is used right down into small subsidiaries, which use Microsoft Project,” he says.

“I have always been a firm believer that in order to effectively sell solutions to our customers, we need to understand the trends and challenges of the customer’s industry, their specific business, strategy, imperatives and initiatives. Then we are better enabled to map our software solutions to solve our customers’ business challenges or desires,” says Umrah. “However, how we articulate the solutions to solve their business problems is extremely critical. The solutions need to be communicated in a language that our customers live and breathe, that is, in their business context.”

Barrick Gold, the world’s largest gold mining company, is using Microsoft technologies such as SQL Server to great effect, most recently in the area of reporting and business intelligence. Barrick generates approximately 500 terabytes of data per month from its various global mining sites and needed a way to improve data collection and streamline reporting.

Working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Systemgroup, Barrick has developed an integrated Operational Reporting System Validation Repository (ORS-VR) infrastructure consisting of a Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Web-based interface that uses Microsoft SQL Server 2005 as a data repository and SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services for validation and site-level reporting. The company also deployed SQL Server 2005 Integration Services to automate the extraction of data from its source systems.

The Canadian team says it is working more and more with partners in the manufacturing space, like Siemens and OSIsoft (which is headquartered in Montreal), as well as with system integrators such as Systemgroup, Cactus, Idea Group and Accenture.

“An important ingredient is to ensure we highlight how Microsoft has assisted other companies in their vertical to solve their business problems,” says Umrah. “The whole objective of the Canadian Manufacturing & Resources (MR) team is to work with the Worldwide MR Industry team, industry partners and associations and the local account teams to achieve this with our clients in Canada.”

Royal Canadian Mint (RCM), the Crown corporation responsible for the minting and distribution of Canada’s circulation coins, made the decision to switch to an information architecture based upon solutions including Windows Server, SQL Server, Microsoft BizTalk Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server in order to take advantage of cutting-edge applications, a higher level of integration and a friendlier user interface.

RCM also decided to implement a Microsoft Dynamics AX enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, due to research that showed AX offers more advanced technology and a lower total cost of ownership than leading Tier 1 ERP solutions. “Microsoft Dynamics AX is much easier to configure than traditional ERP solutions, which makes it relatively fast, inexpensive and less risky to adapt to RCM’s business requirements,” says Neil Hallam, RCM’s chief information officer.

RCM implemented Lean Enterprise for Microsoft Dynamics AX, with the help of Deloitte and eBECS, for a new lean manufacturing approach in its Ottawa and Winnipeg plants. It also added Junction Solutions’ multi-channel retail solution for AX to manage its business across sales channels.

Meanwhile PLM solutions from Dassault Systèmes have automated RCM’s quoting and product development business processes and streamlined engineering. Enovia SmarTeam – Workflow, based on Microsoft SQL Server, streamlines and standardises the interaction of the 18 people and six departments involved in putting together a foreign currency quote. Automated workflow and reminder notices make sure nothing falls through the cracks. RCM engineers use Catia V5 for parametric modelling to generate, modify and validate concepts in a fraction of the time it took with 2D drawings. This has greatly reduced the time it takes to create packaging for coins for collectors.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Prime magazine.

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