Wilbur-Ellis reduced annual support costs by 32% by unlocking the value of the Allari Platform.

The IT Management team at Wilbur-Ellis gained the control and insights they needed by switching from a flat-rate managed service model to Allari’s Service Delivery Platform for their Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne support. Their team now has the ability to incrementally increase production support on demand. This allows them to pivot attention towards higher value objectivesthat accelerate business growth when demands from projects or standard business cycles increase. The Allari Platform also gives them the elasticity to reduce support consumption when demands are low. The metered accounting of the Allari Platform provides their team with data-driven insights into their operations, resulting in continuous process improvements, which further reduce support spending and enhance user experience.

The JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Challenge

The in-house team at Wilbur-Ellis was increasingly being called on to provide support to a growing array of digital initiatives for their business partners. Due to the seasonal nature of the agriculture industry, this same team was also recurrently impacted from spikes of increased demand from the user base. These spikes in productivity were followed by slower cycles which made hiring full time assistance impractical.

The rigid scope of their flat-rate support provider’s engagement agreement meant they were either paying for over-capacity to account for these demand swings, or unable to get the support assistance they needed.

Without a cost effective solution, the productivity spikes fell onto the in-house team. This added workload was causing delays in project and core services delivery, as well as added stress from continual overtime, off-hour and weekend work.

Wilbur-Ellis needed a more flexible solution which allowed their Senior resources to increase productivity on priority business demands as needed, without diminishing core services, or exposing the system to risk by falling behind on administrative maintenance tasks. They also wanted their support provider’s engagement model to more easily adapt to the current capacity demands of the organization.

Additionally, the team wanted more clarity into the support tasks their ERP outsourcing partner was performing, and an easier way to measure their return on investment for the flat-rate fee they were paying each month.

The Solution

Allari created a custom support solution which focused on specific Oracle EnterpriseOne, Identity & Access Management and Database tasks rather than an always-on, flat-rate approach - a model which ensures the IT organization is only charged for the support services it actually needs.

Using the method, lower value administrative distractions were identified which Allari now executes on a continuous basis, including access management requests, periodic system maintenance and code package deployments. Additional technical tasks were also identified which the Wilbur-Ellis team continue to shift to Allari when productivity demands dictate, including tuning and troubleshooting efforts, among others.

Following collaboration, the specific work instructions, escalation procedures and time allotment for each task were documented by Allari and shared securely between both groups. Allari’s ITIL, Kanban process ensures the tasks are executed consistently, regardless of how much time has passed between each requests.

The Wilbur-Ellis team now receives weekly reporting which categorizes all support efforts and accounts for the total time and cost of each. These reports also aide in highlighting areas which could benefit from process improvement.