Chapter 5 : Case Studies
Here is the abstract of five case studies conducted with our sponsors.
Axa
AXA has defined a strong Governance Model for legacy simplification with the objective to incorporate complexity decrease in all IT projects and Activities.
Every IT unit must include convergence & simplification in their annual IT strategic plan. This initiative is supported by template business case and a standard approach for Application selection (aligned to business priorities).
Simplification is mostly justified by the reduction of soft costs, i.e. impact of complexity on business efficiency, which are not easy to justify. Consequently, business must be strongly involved.
Execution is primarily opportunistic and done during functional upgrades of strategic business Applications.
AXA has started experimenting with legacy complexity analysis tools and has found them valuable.
BNP Paribas
BNPP’s main approach for simplification is Legacy Extension with an important effort to expose data access Services to external Applications.
Common business Entities have been defined with attention paid to be organization-independent. Then, in 10 years, most Applications have been modified to expose or use ~1000 basic Data Interfaces have been defined with IDL. Client proxies and server stubs are automatically generated in different languages/technologies (COBOL, Java, ActiveX) thus facilitating integration.
BNPP maintains a catalog of ~2000 reusable Components: Entity access but also business Functions (data checks, risk evaluation, etc.).
Each business Domain (Credit, Insurance, Securities) owns its own Information System with clear data ownership responsibilities and subscription mechanism for external systems/Application.
Replacement was chosen for Payroll (HR Access) and Human Resources (SAP).
Transformation is considered very difficult and used only for the most complex IT systems.
Michelin
Michelin is simplifying its legacy information system by standardizing on worldwide “master applications” for each business Domains. This is done in parallel to streamlining the Processes and making them common in the different countries.
For that matter, Michelin has set-up a strong Governance Model where each Domain’s IS is governed by a committee whose chairman comes from the business but is involved with legacy obsolescence issues.
Michelin is currently studying its simplification approach for their order-to-invoice system. After a very thorough examination of the legacy system (an in-house 4.5 million LOC COBOL system), including Block cartography and complexity analysis (with metrics), Michelin is leaning towards a Transformation Strategy where Data Access and reusable “Business Engines” will be isolated and exposed as Web Services. Process logic will be rewritten with a Business Process Execution Engine which will offer the flexibility required by the business.
In some cases (end of technical support on a technology/Product), Michelin subcontracts Application rewrite. In this case, they are always done without any functional modification.
Total : SAP Simplification
After the merger of Total-Fina with Elf Aquitaine, the Company standardized its ERP on SAP. Because of the number of affiliate Companies and needs for IT environments (development, QA, pre-production…), 44 SAP instances were needed for small and medium Companies.
In 2006, Total launched a project to simplify its SAP infrastructure and reduce its number of templates. The project reduced IT costs by reducing the number of maintenance and Operations Activities, and reducing the number of servers (Servers and SAP transports have been reduced by 40%). ROI should be met in 1.5 years, proving there can be a case for IT-based ROI when the simplification scope is well defined.
Environments were compared and merged two by two, starting with the simplest and closest to best practices. Each step was very short to complete (10 weeks).
Total : Identity Directory renewal
Total is moving the identity and Organization logic away from the Applications into a central Identity Directory, which will help streamline and Automate Processes (when someone arrives or leaves the Company) and reduce maintenance costs. This central Identity Repository will expose its Shared business Functions through web Services.
The new directory is going to replace the old one. It is deployed progressively and runs in parallel to the old one during a transition phase. At first, it handles only new Functions and supports a limited subset of users who need these new Functions. Then, usage grows in terms of implemented Functions and concerned users, until the new system can replace the old one.
Applications are migrated by clusters defined by a dependency analysis on Block cartography. For each Application, migration to the new system is big bang with extensive regression testing beforehand.