Jeld Wen Customer Success Story
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JELD-WEN is a manufacturer of windows and doors that was dissatisfied with its outdated and inefficient corporate intranet. It provided inaccurate and hard to find information that wasted employees' time. JELD-WEN partnered with IBM to create a new intranet portal that centralized relevant business information to improve productivity. The new portal organized content and approval processes. It provided managers quick access to tools and information they needed to perform their jobs effectively and focus on core tasks. Usage metrics showed the majority of managers now use the intranet regularly, improving their productivity and the company's operations.
Jeld Wen Customer Success Story
- 1. “The corporate intranet did not reflect the business acumen and commitment to quality that JELD-WEN demonstrates in other parts of the company.” –Rob Jellesed, Coordinating Business Systems Manager for Administrative Services, JELD-WEN e-business on demand™ JELD-WEN, based in Klamath Falls, Oregon, is one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of reliable windows and doors. With its beginnings as a small Oregon millwork plant in 1960, JELD-WEN (www.jeld-wen.com) has grown into a company of more than 20,000 employees and 150 divisions, whose brands have sold hundreds of millions of window and door units globally. Excelling in high-quality windows and doors, JELD-WEN has earned a reputation for reliable and energy- efficient products at an excellent value. JELD-WEN’s corporate-wide company intranet, however, was nei- ther high quality nor efficient, and JELD-WEN crafts responsive, energy-efficientWeb portal. Overview Challenge Provide management with improved communications tools to oversee basic business operations and enhance management productivity Why On Demand? JELD-WEN wanted to become more responsive to managers by providing them with quick access to the tools and information they needed to conduct smooth business operations Solution Enterprise portal that provides a centralized point of access to relevant business content, enabling managers to work more productively Key Benefits A majority of managers are using the new intranet regularly, saving a significant amount of hours previously spent searching for information; IT staff are receiving fewer trouble calls, enabling them to focus on higher-value projects, while the portal coordinator’s productivity has improved by 10% With its IBM portal solution, JELD-WEN can focus its attention on providing customers with the high-quality craftsmanship for which it is well known.
- 2. On Demand Benefits • A majority of managers regularly use the new intranet for essential operational information,which is the metric that JELD-WEN used to track success of the intranet • Managers are increasing their productivity,saving a significant amount of hours previously spent searching for relevant information on the former corporate intranet • Not having to troubleshoot its intranet,the ITstaff can focus on higher-value work • Coordinated workflow ofWebSphere solution saves portal coordinator two days per month that otherwise would be spent performing routine publishing tasks • Materials on the portal are always up-to-date • The company has been able to reduce shipping and printing costs for paper communications • Open standards-based environment fits in with corporate movement towards open trading zones that are easy to integrate with trading partners and back-end systems Providing access to e-business applications in an open environment it did little, if anything, to provide useful company information. As a corporate communications tool, it hardly served its purpose. Without organized content management or approval processes, the intranet was a vehicle for ad hoc departmental communications. In basic operational areas such as accounting, payroll, human resources, marketing, workers’ compensation and legal compli- ance, what limited information it provided was often inaccurate or outdated, and difficult to find and access. To make matters worse, employees who posted information were not properly trained or supervised for accuracy and consistency of information. This resulted in frequent calls from the plants to corporate headquarters, requesting informa- tion that should have been easily accessible on the intranet. This time-wasting effort kept general managers and IT staff from more proactive, higher-value tasks. Managers throughout the company were spending far too much time sorting through material on the intranet to find the information they needed, which kept them from concentrating on core business issues. After a time, they stopped going to the intranet for information and developed their own lists of critical information and contact names. “The corporate intranet did not reflect the busi- ness acumen and commitment to quality that JELD-WEN demonstrates in other parts of the company,” says Rob Jellesed, coordinating business systems man- ager for administrative services, JELD-WEN. To solve its problem, JELD-WEN needed to provide managers with a single point of access to relevant, actionable information. This would enable its managers to work more productively and ensure the smooth operational processes that the company relied on to support its core business. “We needed to enable our managers to be more responsive to the basic operations of the business,” says Jellesed. “And this meant delivering the tools and information they needed to perform their jobs effectively.” Emerging from intranet chaos To achieve its goals, JELD-WEN teamed up with IBM to create a new business operations intranet that supports the company’s basic business processes. This includes providing personalized, realtime access to accounting, marketing, payroll, legal and workers’ compensation information. The intranet also delivers new content management, approval and reporting procedures that ensure relevant, timely information without clutter.
- 3. With a constant supply of useful operational information, managers can spend more time on core tasks connected with manufacturing and distribution of windows and doors. For instance, a production manager with responsibility for hundreds of employees can access the intranet and quickly locate all the administrative documentation that needs to be completed for employees, such as forms for promotions, new hires and workers’ compensation claims. Then he or she can get back to the day-to-day management of plant floor operations. The necessary documentation is waiting in the portal, clearly aggregated by purpose rather than by administrative department. The portal plays a critical role in aligning the needs of operational managers with the information available across administra- tive departments and groups. Seeking to measure the success of the intranet through management usage, JELD-WEN was gratified to find that a majority of managers are using the new intranet on a regular basis. “By streamlining business operation processes, JELD-WEN has created a new way to formulate, approve and distribute content— and only that content—needed to run the organization,” says Jellesed. Best-of-breed IBM products deliver easy-to-manage solution To create a single point of access that allows for user customization, JELD-WEN chose IBM WebSphere® Portal Extend, Version 4.2. This product provides the connectivity, administration and presentation services to integrate the portal with the portlets that deliver the individual applications. JELD-WEN’s various departments produce the content for the portal on their desktop software. Then the documents are funneled to an appointed “portal coordinator,” who centrally manages the portal using simple workflow for content creation and approval. Customized portlets automatically manage personalization and versioning. WebSphere Portal runs on IBM WebSphere Application Server for the execution of the portlets and features a suite of IBM software including IBM DB2® Universal Database™ for the management of portal configuration data and access-control and user data. WebSphere Portal content publishing components provide the framework that enables departmental portal coordinators to manage portal publishing tasks without help from the IT department. The company also uses IBM WebSphere Personalization to customize the portal based on roles of individuals in the company. JELD-WEN opted for powerful IBM ^ pSeries™ 610 to run the portal software and worked with IBM Software Services for WebSphere to implement the portal. In deciding on the pSeries, JELD-WEN leveraged its considerable in-house AIX® skills and the server’s track record for outstanding performance at the company. “IBM basically owns the portal market, and there’s a good reason for that. IBM has a lot of people who have outstanding experience and skills in technical product development.” –Rob Jellesed Key Components Software • IBMWebSphere Portal Extend, Version 4.2 • IBMWebSphere Application Server Advanced Edition,Version 4.0.2 • IBMWebSphere Personalization • IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer • IBMWebSphere Site Analyzer • IBM DB2 Universal Database for AIX Enterprise-Extended Edition, Version 7.2 • IBM Lotus Instant Messaging Servers • IBM ^ pSeries 610 Services • IBM Software Services forWebSphere
- 4. The JELD-WEN portal leverages IBM Lotus Instant Messaging for collaboration, a solution that is result- ing in savings on long-distance calls and voice-mail. IBM WebSphere Site Analyzer captures and analyzes Web site data to show visitor traffic, behav- ior and site usage. The WebSphere Portal software provides iframe portlets, which are views into another server, Web server or application server. These integrate the portal with legacy applications and third-party services such as MapQuest and Weather.com that provide fast access to further relevant information. Integrated, open environment for scalable solution Early in the process of designing the portal, JELD-WEN made a strategic decision to utilize open standards- based, enterprise-class software to help ensure scalable, flexible integration across platforms. “This was a visionary decision made by management at the time,” says Jellesed. “The idea was to look at the solution in the context of our whole technical infrastructure company wide and to create an open environment. “In evaluating portal vendors, IBM was first on our list,” says Jellesed, “but we also looked at Hewlett-Packard and Computer Associates. Neither of those companies really had IBM’s breadth and depth of services. IBM basically owns the portal market, and there’s a good reason for that. IBM has a lot of people who have outstanding experience and skills in technical product development.” With the new portal now in place for several months, users have reported they are saving time in finding the information they need. Besides replacing the former intranet solution, the portal takes the place of broad- cast e-mails, paper memos and other one-to-many communications, and in the process saves paper, shipping costs and printing costs. In addition, using the custom portlets developed in WebSphere Studio Application Developer shipped with the WebSphere software, each portal coordinator saves two or more days per month that would otherwise be spent performing routine publishing chores, such as routing documents and document summaries. The IT staff is also saving the time it used to spend on trouble- shooting intranet problems and can do a better job of focusing on higher-value work. According to Jellesed, there is, however, one drawback. The quality portal that he and his team released is captivating peoples’ imaginations all over the company, and they are bringing up ideas for productive new enhancements. “That’s more work for us, but fortunately, because we’ve built our portal right with open standards-based IBM components, we’ll be able to respond to their needs and suggestions.” For more information Please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner. Visit us at: ibm.com/e-business ® © Copyright IBM Corporation 2003 IBM Corporation Corporate Marketing New Orchard Road Armonk, NY 10504 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America 12-03 All Rights Reserved AIX,DB2,DB2 Universal Database,e-business on demand,the e-business logo,the e(logo)business on demand lockup,^,IBM,the IBM logo, Lotus,pSeries andWebSphere are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States,other countries or both. Other company,product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. This case study is an example of how one customer uses IBM and/or IBM Business Partner products and/or technology.There is no guarantee of comparable results. References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates.