Bombardier Capital Drives ERP Efficiency
Snapshot| Organization Bombardier Capital |
| The Challenge To create a data extract, transform, and load architecture that maximizes the effectiveness of SAP R/3 applications while speeding their implementation. |
| The Strategy Automate the creation of interfaces between legacy financial systems and SAP |
| The Challenge To streamline and standardize the loan origination process |
| The Results Reduced the effort required to create R/3 interfaces by 40 percent; freed programming resources for other tasks; increased access to information assets. |
| iWay Software Solution iWay ERP Data Migrator, iWay DataMigrator (formerly iWay ETL Manager), Consulting. |
Data Migration Technology From iWay Software Streamlines Enterprise Software Implementation and Increases ROI
Implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is a complex, labor-intensive process that requires more work, time, and resources than many organizations anticipate. The unexpected scope of such efforts often causes companies to miss crucial "go live" deadlines and exceed implementation budgets. At a time when CIOs are challenged to demonstrate a tangible return on enterprise software investments, technologies that can speed up the implementation or increase access to legacy data are worth their weight in gold.
Information technology (IT) professionals at Bombardier Capital are well acquainted with these business dynamics, which is why they turned to iWay Software for help keeping a complex SAP R/3 software implementation on schedule. "As we depend more and more on R/3 applications, iWay Software's Data Migrator technology becomes increasingly important to our business," says Rick Mitchell, CIO at Bombardier Capital.
Established in 1973, Bombardier Capital is the financial services arm of global transportation equipment manufacturer Bombardier, Inc. An international supplier of financial solutions, the company provides lending, leasing, and asset-management services for a range of consumer products, aircraft, rail cars, and other industrial equipment. Bombardier Capital employs more than 1,000 people in the United States and Canada and serves customers throughout North and South America.
Adhering to Corporate Standards
As the corporate standard for enterprise software, Bombardier Capital has used SAP R/3 software wherever possible to run its business. They hired PricewaterhouseCoopers as the primary integrator for an extensive IT overhaul using R/3 financial and human resource software. "One of our primary goals was to move to a system that could provide daily financial information and allow us to close the books faster," says Tonya Briggs, a project manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers. "In order to do this, Bombardier Capital needed to develop interfaces between SAP and several legacy systems to allow data transfer on a daily basis – then use that data for reporting."
For example, Bombardier Capital's Rail Car, Manufactured Housing Lending, Inventory Finance, and Aircraft Services Divisions each have their own legacy accounting systems. Computer platforms include Microsoft Windows NT, IBM AIX, IBM MVS, IBM AS/400, and IBM DOS/VSE. Databases include Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 Universal Database, IBM DB400, Unidata, CA-IDMS, FoxPro, and Pervasive SQL 2000. "We needed to get data from all of these systems into the SAP General Ledger each day so we could produce financial statements more quickly," Briggs explains.
Data Migration Experts Called In
Initially, developers at Bombardier Capital planned to create the legacy interfaces themselves. However, they quickly realized that if they were to meet their planned go-live dates for the R/3 Financial (FI) and Controlling (CO) modules, they would need to accelerate the data migration effort and standardize the interfaces. "As we developed the requirements, we realized lots of ABAP programming would be required to create the SAP interfaces," says Mike Pannell, Director of ERP at Bombardier Capital. "We weren't sure we had the resources to create these interfaces and maintain them on an ongoing basis."
iWay Software was asked to assist PricewaterhouseCoopers with the data migration effort. Bombardier Capital purchased iWay's Data Migrator for SAP software and enlisted its consulting group to help create the legacy interfaces. Data Migrator is a powerful conversion and interface solution that can rapidly extract, transform, and load data from more than 85 data sources across 35 platforms into SAP R/3 or the SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW).
Bombardier Capital evaluated extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) products from iWay Software, CrossWorlds Software, and Informix. They selected iWay Software's Data Migrator because it had the most complete set of capabilities and the strong local presence of Information Builders, iWay's corporate parent.
Conserving Precious Programming Resources
The implementation team used the Data Migrator software to automate the creation of interfaces from nine different legacy systems, allowing ABAP developers to concentrate on other aspects of the implementation. Many of the legacy systems required multiple interfaces. For example, each loan system needed to be able to transfer data for daily activity, revenue accrual, and data warehouse input. Pannell says Data Migrator was easy to use and worked as advertised.
All told, Briggs estimates Data Migrator reduced the effort required to create R/3 interfaces by about 40 percent. Additionally, by standardizing the translation routines and placing them in a central location (rather than requiring each legacy system to maintain individual translation tables), the new architecture will simplify maintenance efforts over the long term, saving additional resources. Bombardier Capital now has a reusable infrastructure to accommodate other source systems and SAP modules, and a repository for business rules that encourages centralized and reusable code.
"We created a very productive data migration platform that Bombardier Capital can use on an ongoing basis," says Briggs. "The iWay Software consultants became part of the team."
Pannell concurs. "The iWay Software team was exceptional," he says. "They helped us meet our deadlines so we could go live on schedule, and they worked well with the team that we had in place. Our deadlines became their deadlines. All of the SAP interfaces are now in place and working well."
Benefits of Daily Data
Completing the legacy interfaces quickly and accurately was one of the key mitigating factors to deploying the FI and CO modules on time and under budget. And having efficient interfaces in place is helping drive a quick return on investment for the R/3 systems. For example, with the FI and CO modules receiving continual updates from the loan systems, managers can obtain interim balance sheet reports rather than waiting until the end of the month to obtain financial data.
"For a finance company, cash is the commodity, so it's important to be able to track it on a daily basis," says Pannell. "Being able to do interim reporting is a huge step forward for us. It helps justify the time and effort we have put into this project."
While the R/3 applications bring a new level of automation to the business, the need to maintain interfaces to the legacy systems is not likely to change. "Our finance systems will probably always be around since they handle very specific loan services functions that SAP simply doesn't handle,"says Mitchell.
Leveraging the Infrastructure
In the future, Bombardier Capital plans to leverage its knowledge of iWay Software technology for other data migration projects, such as to create interfaces to SAP BW. According to Mitchell, while SAP BW includes built-in extract, transform, and load routines for many R/3 modules, Data Migrator provides an easy way to integrate data from non-SAP data sources as well. This allows Bombardier Capital to quickly build a comprehensive data warehouse under the BW umbrella. Data Migrator can automate every phase of moving data – from source extraction to data transformation to integration with the target BW InfoSource.
"The data migration project has been extremely successful so far," concludes Mitchell. "We have been pleased with the data migration functionality and happy with the performance of the iWay Software Consulting group, which continues to deliver high-quality technology and services to our organization."
