PlaceMakers is Fletcher Building’s retail trading arm in New Zealand. The leading and largest supplier of building materials and hardware, PlaceMakers also manufactures frames, roof trusses and structural components at operations around the country.

Adopting an Adaptiv approach
PlaceMakers decided to move away from their heavy reliance on a single outsource provider in 2012, as part of their ongoing technology strategy.

PlaceMakers looked for partners with the technical expertise to support their business aspirations – especially in integration. More importantly, they wanted a partner who fitted into a culture based on collaboration, commitment, transparency, and accountability. On the recommendation of their newly appointed operations manager, PlaceMakers chose Adaptiv to work alongside Fletcher’s internal IT team as their integration partner.

“We’re now doing 20 times the volume load we predicted.”

It was a ‘natural fit’ from the start, says Mark Phillips, Fletcher Building Group’s GM of Technology for the Distribution and Concrete Divisions. “From the outset of our initial engagement,” says Phillips, “we were very pleasantly surprised. Adaptiv very much shared our cultural values and were a perfect partner for us.”

Adaptiv and PlaceMakers have worked together on hundreds of projects in the last eight years, from migrating the business from BizTalk to reviewing and recommending EDI strategies, to providing integration leadership and services for a significant digital transformation initiative.

Building an award-worthy customer service programme
Following a shift in business strategy in 2017, PlaceMakers decided to implement a digital programme to improve the quality of its customer service.

The programme launched in late 2019, and successfully transformed three major points of contact with PlaceMakers’ customers. As well as optimising in-store digital processes (such as mobile transaction systems) the digital programme introduced a transport management solution with end-to-end visibility for staff and customers, and created an online customer channel for purchases, queries, and order tracking.

The programme is so successful that, in a building industry first, PlaceMakers was one of just three finalists shortlisted for the prestigious CIO Summit 2020 award for Business Transformation through Digital and IT.

Phillips and Ritesh Patel, General Manager Digital and Transformation (NZ Distribution) at Fletcher Building, are justifiably proud of the programme and the hard-won CIO award nomination. “It’s been one of the most exciting and transformative projects we’ve worked on with Adaptiv. We’ve come a long way on a legacy ERP that was developed before APIs were even conceived,” says Phillips.

A platform for change
Fletcher Building Group’s technology team had a clear vision of the architecture they needed to build to support their new customer value propositions.

“Adaptiv played a key role in helping to shape the overall strategy, direction, planning and design of the integration components of that architecture,” says Phillips.

To support the transformation programme, PlaceMakers needed a new integration platform to leverage its 27-year-old Epicor ERP. Adaptiv put forward a successful business case for MuleSoft as the integration platform, with Solace as the event broker platform.

“Because of their years of working with Fletcher Building Group, Adaptiv understood our complex environment. They appreciated how our legacy ERP worked, and how to approach designing integrations to it – so we didn’t have to start from scratch. From a thought leadership, tool setup and building perspective, Adaptiv, along with our group technology team, have been key in setting up foundations we could successfully build on.”

Building a progressive business programme
Patel says that the building industry is one of the last to be digitalised. “The transition from ordering building supplies by phone to using a self-service app has been a significant one for our customers, but moving to a digital platform has been essential for us to stay in business and compete effectively.”

Despite the steep learning curve – for staff and customers alike – Patel says the programme is highly successful. “Over 25 percent of our managed accounts signed up for our digital products in six months. That’s 60 percent compared to budget. In just one month we reached the volume of transactions that we expected to achieve in 12. We’re now doing 20 times the volume load we predicted.”

Just based on staff time saved through automating previously manual processes, Patel worked out that, overall, the programme saves PlaceMakers more than 100 years of labour. “We regained the time and capacity for our people to shift from being just order takers to proactive salespeople. They can have real conversations with customers now, which allows them to add more value.”

PlaceMakers’ handle over 1.2 million phone orders a year through their branch call centres. The digital channel has significantly reduced the annual volume of calls.

The integration approach delivered value and accelerated speed to market, says Phillips. “The combination of partner technology and the overall architecture means we’re only building our integrations once, and using them in many parts of our solution. For example, we built the Trade Pricing integration once – but reused it for three or four more different products. That reduced the cost and time required to bring new features to market dramatically.

“We’re now releasing new features to market every two weeks, where previously it would’ve been every six months.”

Patel says the technologies used to support PlaceMakers’ digital strategy played a major part in its success. “I’m surprised we’ve been able to do all this given the legacy technologies that we have. However, that’s where MuleSoft comes into play. It allows you to successfully orchestrate these things.”

PlaceMakers’ digital programme is in year one of a three-year journey. And to ensure that their staff and customers are engaged and onboard, PlaceMakers put a comprehensive digital learning programme in place.

The value of team players
Phillips places a high value on teamwork, and Adaptiv proved their worth time and time again.

“On a day-to-day basis,’ says Phillips, “Adaptiv’s team have acted as the MuleSoft leads across the Digital integration teams, working with Group Technology in areas such as thought leadership and knowledge, through to building features.

“Adaptiv’s people have been amazing, as has been the company’s ability to work alongside our other key partners. That really talks to the culture of engagement, and how Adaptiv’s people fitted in extremely well with our business – and did from the outset.”

Adding value, Adaptiv style
“The Adaptiv value-add, over and above just pure integration services has been their leadership in CICD (continuous integration, continuous development),” says Phillips, “Adaptiv helped us drive and mature our CICD and DevOps capability to support our digital transformation going forward.

“Adaptiv’s bedrock engagement style is based on professionalism and capability. And the fact that they are just good people. They just fit in. Adaptiv stands out for their technology leadership and ability to create genuine, measurable value using MuleSoft and Solace. They’re also not afraid to tell us constructively when we’re not doing something right. That’s the sign of a good partner, and we really value that.”

Adaptiv’s open and collaborative business style adds value to every interaction, according to Phillips.

“Adaptiv’s culture of engagement and professionalism, their deep knowledge, and willingness to offer advice and beyond, have been a hallmark of our relationship over the years. The trust and respect we have for Adaptiv is built on their legacy of outstanding delivery for PlaceMakers.”

Founded in 1897, Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) is one of New Zealand’s oldest and most prestigious tertiary institutions and is rated in the top two percent of the world’s 18,000 universities.

VUW has over 22,000 students, including 3,700 international students from more than 110 countries, and is supported by 2,300 full-time equivalent staff. It has ten faculties across three main campuses in Wellington, along with research centres and other institutions around the city.

Affordable and futureproofed
VUW became increasingly frustrated by usability and accuracy issues in their ageing staff directory solution, and decided to design and implement a new application.

As a starting point, the University completed a proof of concept leveraging a leading integration application. They found out the platform would work, but the cost of using it was an issue.

“The platform was simply too expensive for us,” says Micky Heath, VUW Project Manager. “However, we knew there’d been significant advances in the Azure integration space. Microsoft New Zealand referred us to Adaptiv Integration to demonstrate how the platform could solve our problems while still being affordable.”

An Azure learning curve
VUW agreed to an adaptiv.educate workshop, led by Nikolai Blackie, Principal Architect and Co-founder of Adaptiv. Heath and members of the VUW staff directory project team, including the University’s applications associate director, applications architect, developer, tester, and web developer, were given an in-depth look at the technology platforms under consideration (with a close focus on Microsoft Azure). The workshop evaluated the respective capabilities, and established how each benefitted the University in terms of functionality and cost.

“The adaptiv.educate workshop not only took us through Microsoft’s roadmap and future plans, but also deep-dived into the technical aspects of the Azure solution,” says Heath. “It was a good balance of everything we needed to know. By the end of the day, we were confident that Azure was going to do the job we needed.”

“They’re flexible, reliable and accountable. And they kept us ahead of the game.”

Proving the point
Adaptiv’s next step was to deliver a proof of concept to validate VUW’s technology decision and project approach with an on-site workshop.

“Adaptiv listened closely to our requirements over the four-day adaptiv.verify workshop,” says Heath. “They quickly got a range of components up and running, showing us that Azure Integration would successfully work for us, and perform to our expectations.”

As well as verifying Azure’s suitability for VUW’s staff directory and confirming costs, the workshop introduced the application development team to Azure’s tooling and processes. Team members assessed it first-hand and established it as fit for purpose.

Once the proof of concept stage was signed off, Adaptiv delivered a comprehensive maturity workshop to key VUW stakeholders. Held over several weeks, adaptiv.assess covered project governance, strategy and solution design. Attendees understood the value and limitations of VUW’s current approach, and went on to formally define roles and responsibilities, create processes and establish future technology roadmaps.

“As part of the adaptiv.assess workshop,” says Heath, “Nikolai led us through a co-design process where we got everything reviewed, documented and squared up before we started development. We ended up with a comprehensive blueprint for success.”

Adaptiv helped VUW set up the Azure platform for integration, before helping to develop a staff directory application which pulls data from five source systems. The collated data can be searched for on the VUW website and by using the University’s search client.

Working with Adaptiv
VUW prefers to retain internal ownership of their technology projects and utilise their own expertise. However, with zero in-house Azure Integration experience or capability at the start of the project, and a tightly resourced team, Heath said it was critical that Adaptiv worked alongside the University’s team to offer on-site DevOps and Azure training, and guidance and direction when needed.

The input of Adaptiv’s team as they worked side-by-side with the VUW team was integral to the successful design, development and delivery of the project. “It has been really good having them as part of our development team,” says Heath, “and we’re hoping to continue that engagement with them next year.”

Heath thoroughly enjoyed working with Nikolai and his team. “They were knowledgeable and super easy to work with. We appreciated Nikolai’s experience with newer software vendors as well. And he gave us really honest feedback about what we were trying to do, and what would work, or not.”

“Nikolai proactively forwards us information and ideas he thinks will help us. He’s added a high level of expertise and leadership to the project, and is still very much an integral part of the team.”

Heath has no hesitation recommending Adaptiv as an integration partner. “They are probably the easiest vendor I’ve ever worked with,” he says. “They’re flexible, reliable and accountable. And they kept us ahead of the game, which is important with a new technology stack.”

We get it.

You understand and are enthused by the potential of integration to enable you to seamlessly access and utilise real-time data, and automate processes between disparate, bespoke or customised legacy solutions. You’re excited by the potential to gain a significant competitive edge and extend the lifetime value of your applications.

And what business wouldn’t be?

What’s in the way of making your project a powerhouse for the business?

But where do you start? How do you make sure that your investment in time and money deliver a successful project? And what’s in the way of making your project a powerhouse for the business?

The four roadblocks to integration project success

1. Lack of technical expertise, capability and capacity. Let’s face it; few organisations have the requisite internal resources with the up-to-date technical knowledge, capabilities and capacity to deliver a comprehensive and challenging integration project. You’re unlikely to have the people you need just ‘kicking around’ in case you one day need them. So challenge number one is to find a partner you can trust, who has what you need, on tap.

2. The challenges of getting up to speed with technology. Good on you. You’ve made the strategic decision to move ahead with an integration project, and you’re ready and willing to reap significant value from your disparate but critically important applications. But the big question is: ‘What technologies and approach are best suited for your needs?’. You’ve probably invested time and effort researching and even shortlisting viable technology platforms. You’ve started to discuss API management and had some interesting internal debates on how to enforce consistency and security for your line-of-business, mobile and legacy applications, website and new systems. You’ve downloaded whitepapers and watched the videos. But where to from here? How do you work through the vast amount of information you and other stakeholders have gathered to make the right decision for the business? And where do you get expert advice from to ensure you don’t make a potentially expensive mistake?

3. Not coming to terms with a. where you are now, and b. where you want to be. You can’t start anything new and expect it to work without understanding where you are starting from. It’s time for some soul searching by asking (more) big questions like: ‘Are we ready for an integration platform refresh? How mature are our current approaches? And how can we move forward? Who will be responsible for what? Are our people ready?’. While it may by this stage be tempting to offer the number 42 as the answer to everything, working through these questions, and coming up with sensible, in-depth and documented answers and processes, is critical to project success.

4. Deciding when to ‘green light’ the project. You’ve done the research, validated your choice of technologies, and understand the where-to-from here process to realise a successful implementation. But before you press ‘go’ you need evidence that the project vision will meet your business needs. In other words, will this integration do what you want it to do, and what’s going to be involved? The only way to make this decision is to set up the proof of value goals, scope, and inputs required to achieve them. And then build part of the integration to demonstrate that it’s going to work. Setting off on your integration journey without ‘proof’ is a high-risk strategy at the best of times.

So, how do you raze these roadblocks to the ground?
Good question! And I’m going to keep the answers short and sweet.

1. Align yourself with a partner you trust. Someone who has the solutions, services, and proven capabilities to make your project a success. They should provide you with an overview of how the integration process will support your businesses strategy, and an understanding of the business benefits.
2. Educate yourself. Ask your partner to equip you with the in-depth knowledge and understanding you need to make an informed and confident technology recommendation to the business decision-makers in readiness to proceed to a detailed assessment of your environment and objectives.
3. Assess your status. Your partner should work with you to assess the maturity of capabilities and shortcomings of your current integrations. They need to roadmap your future plans and detail the steps to get there. And set cost and time expectations.
4. Verify your concept. Build part of the project. And need we say test it thoroughly? Once you have the confidence that the integration project will not only work, but deliver the expected business value, you are ready to hit ‘go’.

If you want to be roadblock free and ready to power ahead, either call or email Phil Cullen, or download the adaptiv.align, educate, assess and verify PDFs for more details.

…

For a long time the IT industry (amongst others) has focussed on developing a ‘proof of concept’ (PoC) as the first part of a customer engagement.

A PoC is usually an isolated piece of work that’s designed to assess the viability of a specific software product for solving a business need.

In other words, you’re checking to see if and how your idea will work.

The concept part of the PoC is a basic framework for the solution, it’s not a fully developed and completed piece of work that you can use to solve a problem. It’s just the bare bones needed to decide whether the idea is viable, or if you need to go back to the drawing board.

You could say it’s an experiment to validate your inputs against your expected outputs. And if the outcome meets your success criteria, you can take it as proof that the technology works.

The cost of an idea
There’s nothing wrong with a PoC. But what’s often overlooked is the amount of time, effort and investment that goes into it.

And apart from verifying that the technology and your approach is right for the project, what do you end up with? Well, all too often, a PoC is a side project that goes nowhere. Apart from proving ‘it’ can be done, the outcome isn’t a useable piece of work. It’s a great starting point, but as a concept, it chews up budget that you could be using to actually drive change rather than just demonstrate it.

So let’s talk value. More specifically, adding it.

The value of an idea that works
What if you push your PoC further, and aim to instead create a production reuse case using a proof of value (PoV) approach?

I believe that if you’re going to make the effort to select a concept to work on, then why not apply the potential solution to a real (as in actual, everyday) business problem? Using genuine data, streamlining existing processes, and delivering a (re)useable outcome.

If the PoV exercise isn’t successful, or the proposed technology turns out to be a poor fit, then you obviously don’t take it through to production. But if all things go well (as they should) and it’s a great success – you’ve got something ready-made to move forward with.

Value: You have the first building block of a new system without having to replicate the time, input and money needed to develop a non-reusable regular old PoC.

The PoC has been in play for such a long time that moving to a PoV proposition takes some reframing. But once you understand that the ‘proof’ exercise can quickly help your business realise genuine production value (and drive down the total cost of ownership of the overall solution), then it makes perfect sense.

ABOUT NIKOLAI BLACKIE//
Nikolai is the Principal Architect and Co-founder at Adaptiv Integrations

Fulton Hogan set up in Dunedin in 1933, and is now a leading infrastructure construction, roadworks and aggregate supplier in New Zealand, Australia and Fiji. It has 100 locations and employs over 8000 staff.

Warrick Atherton, Fulton Hogan’s Group Information Systems Manager is based at the company’s head office in Christchurch. Initially employed as a solution architect, he now manages and develops the complex system of business applications Fulton Hogan depends on.

The close collaboration designed and provided a solution which met all the data network supplier’s requirements.

Atherton and his team have a constant stream of projects on the go. As well as introducing new systems and efficiently consolidating old ones, it’s essential that every integration and upgrade supports Fulton Hogan’s business processes and adds value to existing applications. They also need to interact directly with customers’ systems. Unsurprisingly, Atherton places a high value on transparent, direct, and responsive relationships with technology partners.

Bye-bye Biztalk
In early 2019 Fulton Hogan decided to retire its 2013 version of BizTalk to lower TCO and reduce the time and cost of integration delivery. The business moved to Boomi’s industry-leading iPaaS platform.

As recommended by Boomi, Fulton Hogan engaged Adaptiv to complete the multi-phased migration of the business’s existing integrations. This included Fulton Hogan’s line-of-business systems with JD Edwards.

Adaptiv started by analysing the existing BizTalk integrations. It then reverse-engineered the business logic, and reimplemented it in Boomi. Adaptiv listened to what Fulton Hogan stakeholders had to say, rather than simply duplicating BizTalk’s business logic. By taking note and making small adjustments to the logic as the project progressed, Adaptiv delivered exceptional value across the board.

To date, Adaptiv has successfully integrated Boomi with Workday, Rinami Cantara (the web service interface for JDE), Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Command Alcon. In the final phase of the project, Adaptiv is currently migrating a Flow Software installation (which Fulton Hogan inherited as part of their acquisition of Stevensons) across to Boomi.

A team approach
Adaptiv is a breath of fresh air for Atherton and his team. “The other integration partners and services we tried had too many layers of bureaucracy and people to get through. And not enough actually getting the job done. We’re fairly lean, so it’s good to have an equally lean team working alongside us.”

Adaptiv and Fulton Hogan have worked together on many projects together, and Atherton says it’s an excellent fit. “Adaptiv is very responsive. Unlike some other partners we tried, you can talk directly to the person doing the job, rather than going through three or four different people.”

The businesses continue to work together closely, and Atherton regards Adaptiv as integral to the IS department. “Internally we’ve got two integration architects working directly alongside Adaptiv on projects. Adaptiv has a good team approach. They can do end-to-end development with a very agile method. Which is perfect because we chop and change what we’re doing based on demand. We may have up to six projects on the go at once. Adaptiv knows what’s going on, what’s coming up, and always make sure it has enough development resources and solution architects available to do the job.”

Syncing the waterworks
Indeed, Adaptiv completed several projects during the same timeframe. In one, it developed an integration between Fulton Hogan and a major water supply company’s work management system, Maximo, automating work assignment and status updates between the two entities.

Meeting stringent SLAs for responsiveness and reliability was central to this project. And Fulton Hogan needed to deliver it in Australia to meet legal sovereignty requirements. Adaptiv responded by creating an infrastructure solution design that utilises the Azure platform in conjunction with Boomi Integration. All APIs run via an Azure API Management instance and are back-ended onto Azure Service Bus, hosted in Microsoft’s Sydney data centre. Adaptiv configured the Boomi integration as an additional instance, also hosted on Azure in Sydney. Adaptiv and Fulton Hogan worked together to build the integration architecture for the project, which Adaptiv’s development team then implemented.

The project started in March 2020, and it was recently successfully delivered into production.

A very neat interface
In another successful project between April and June 2020, Adaptiv worked with Fulton Hogan on a highly competitive pitch to an Australian national wholesale open-access data network. Fulton Hogan needed to demonstrate it had the capability to integrate with the network supplier’s work management system, Microsoft Dynamics 365, delivering within a tight timeframe and in parallel with the interface construction.

The close collaboration designed and provided a solution which met all the data network supplier’s requirements, and Fulton Hogan were extremely pleased with the work carried out. Atherton says, “Adpativ once again delivered to scope and within a very tight timeframe.”

A remote but close partnership
Like most businesses, COVID-19 affected the way Adaptiv and Fulton Hogan work together. But, as old hands at delivering remote projects, it’s been business-as-usual for Adaptiv.

“We’ve had lots of face-to-face meetings in the past, so we know the team well,” says Atherton. “We use Teams to stay connected and work as a close-knit team. We have complete trust in Adaptiv. We know who does what, so we don’t have to watch over their shoulders.”

Atherton values the relationship and has no hesitation in recommending Adaptiv saying, “The quality of work, their knowledge and approach is very consistent. They are the right fit for our organisation.”