Larry Haynes says the modernized front end to Noritake`s

Larry Haynes says the modernized
front end to Noritake’s legacy
software adds functionality.
24
APRIL 2010
ibmsystemsmag.com/power
PAST INV ESTMENTS HELP
NOR ITAK E CO. DELIV ER
NEX TGENER ATION APPS
A HEA D OF SCHEDULE
L
By Jim Utsler
E G AC Y A P PL ICAT ION S —
no matter which hardware or operating
system they run on—often get a bad
rap, simply because of their name, as
if “legacy” meant old and outdated. In
fact, that type of software can be more
PHOTO BY TOM ROGOWSKI
valuable than newer, fancier, off-the-shelf solutions. Legacy
applications are tried-and-true solutions, and many have been
used for a decade or more. Users continue to develop them year
after year and build in logic that applies directly to how they
run their businesses.
That’s why many companies
choose to modernize their software
rather than replace it, seeing their
legacy applications as an inheritance of
sorts, a valuable gift handed down from
one generation of users to the next. And
that’s how Noritake Co. Inc. views its
core RPG-based software: a road-worthy
solution that fits its business model
perfectly.
Unt il recently, however, that
solution had a green-screen interface
and lacked some functionality the
company had on a w ish list. To
address these and other issues, the
company turned to Business Computer
Design Int’l Inc. (BCD) and its many
modernization solutions. Now, after
having worked with BCD to enhance its
core application, Noritake has a legacy
application it’s sure to pass on to further
generations of users.
ibmsystemsmag.com/power
APRIL 2010
21
“We’ve had
calls from customers
definite advantage.”
telling us that our competitors don’t have anything like this. That
puts us at a
—Larry Haynes, senior programmer analyst, Noritake
Price Matching
Headquartered in Fair Lawn, N.J., Noritake is a wholly owned
subsidiary of the Noritake Co. Limited of Japan. Although
the company has an industrial division that creates and
distributes grinding wheels and other abrasive tools for the
automotive industry, it’s best known for its fine tableware,
glassware and crystal.
Those table settings—which include everyday and high-end
china—are produced in overseas plants and distributed in North
America by Noritake, with orders going out of its Savannah,
Ga., distribution center. Customers include high-end, large
department stores, smaller independent customers such as
jewelry stores, and midrange chain stores.
The company uses an IBM System i* 525 at its Cincinnati
IT center to run its mission-critical legacy application, which
was developed by its Japan-based parent company many
years ago. Larry Haynes, senior programmer analyst with
Noritake, says, “I’ve been with the company for eight years,
and the software was used for production long before then.”
The application and Cincinnati IT resources also support
Noritake’s industrial division.
Noritake’s quest for a modernized application interface
began when Naoki Inagaki, VP and general manager of
its tabletop division, decided the company should let its
independent customers handle some services by themselves.
This would alleviate some of the pressures involved in the
entire beginning-to-end order-placement process, which
was becoming a burden to the independent customers and
Noritake’s customer service representatives (CSRs).
When placing orders in the past, for example, smaller
customers would either work with an independent Noritake
sales rep or initiate the orders themselves. In both cases,
orders were written on preprinted forms and mailed or faxed
to Noritake. (Larger customers did and continue to use EDI.)
But this presented a host of issues.
“Periodically through the year, we have special promotional
pricing,” Haynes says. “But the forms didn’t really accommodate
those prices, so if someone combined a nonspecial order with
a special order, a lot of research had to go into determining
which price went with which item. Similarly, a sales rep might
tell a customer he could get items at promotional prices that
didn’t match what our actual prices were.”
This resulted in a great deal of manual research, with
CSRs reviewing each order line by line to make sure the pricing
on each item was correct. And as with any form filled out by
22
APRIL 2010
ibmsystemsmag.com/power
hand, hard-to-read entries resulted in incorrect information
being entered into the company’s legacy application. “It was
getting ugly, because our customers were becoming unhappy,”
Inagaki says.
Additional Functionality
That’s when Inagaki stepped in and told the company’s IT
department that it had to find something to help reduce the
amount of time spent on each order and address pricing and dataentry errors. This new solution—however it was built—would
allow independent sales representatives and customers to place
orders and perform other self-service functions online.
“At that time, we brought in a consultant to talk about
setting up a self-service Web site that ran on PC servers.
But then we ran into cost issues, including having to
purchase additional hardware and having them do all of
the programming for us. The total cost for that solution was
prohibitive,” Haynes says. “And then there was the issue
of getting the data from those servers into our System i
server and vice versa, as well as the maintenance issues
involved in this type of solution. We have a small IT
department—there are only three of us—and we can’t
afford to be putting out fires all the time.”
Around the same time, Haynes happened to run across
an announcement for a webinar, hosted by BCD, that would
explain how to Web-enable legacy applications. Haynes was
amazed with the demonstration and decided to download a
free 30-day trial version of BCD’s WebSmart ILE, which lets
users create new Web applications and modernize existing
RPG- and COBOL-based applications.
After experimenting with the solution and quickly creating
a test order-entry application, Haynes ran everything past
Inagaki, demonstrating that although the test application had
a graphical front interface, it accessed the company’s battletested application data. “There was a lot of interest in this
right away, largely because we already had the hardware—the
525—in place, we would only have to pay for the BCD software
and we had a consultant—me—on staff. Compared to the other
proposed solution, this one promised significant cost savings,
while even offering more functionality,” Haynes says.
A Definite Advantage
Noritake decided to go with WebSmart to webify its legacy
application, and Haynes quickly began writing new front-end
UP CLOSE
Web applications that would tie back into the company’s
legacy software and existing database. His first users were
the company’s sales reps, who acted as a pilot audience.
They tested the new applications, made suggested
improvements and tested again, finally giving the
new site a thumbs-up.
Working with a nine-month deadline, Haynes
began compil ing t he applicat ions t hat would
ultimately compose Noritake’s B2B site. Development
went so well, however, that the site actually went
live nearly six months ahead of the deadline. “It
was amazing how quickly I could create these
applications,” Haynes says.
Now, customers can place and track orders online,
with all of Noritake’s catalog and pricing information at
their fingertips. (Customers using EDI can also track orders
on this site.) This eliminated the pricing issues the company
had been experiencing and took the manual confirmation of
pricing out of the hands of the company’s CSRs. Additionally,
because orders are automatically fed into Noritake’s legacy
application and back-end database, data-entry errors are a
thing of the past.
Although originally developed for independent customers,
the site has gained wider acceptance, with internal users
also taking advantage of it. Sales reps, for example, use it
to place orders for customers rather than filling out paper
forms for them. Even CSRs have begun using it to enter orders
and quickly look up information in response to customer
requests. “Nobody wants to go back to the green screen,”
Inagaki says.
More importantly, though, the customer response to
the WebSmart-developed B2B site has been overwhelmingly
positive. Because Noritake omitted from its site many of
the bells and whistles typically associated with consumer
sites, customers can quickly get in and get out, placing
and tracking orders with minimum fuss. According to
Haynes, “We’ve had calls from customers telling us that
our competitors don’t have anything like this. That puts
us at a definite advantage.”
End-to-End Coverage
At the same time the company began using WebSmart to
develop its B2B site, it also decided to employ several other
BCD tools internally. These include Nexus Portal, EZ-Picken’s
and Clover. Nexus Portal is used to host Noritake’s intranet.
With this tool, the company created portal pages based on
operational groups and individuals within them.
Embedded within these pages are different modules,
including one-click access to controlled Web pages, such as
Yahoo’s financial page, and Clover-developed reports. Clover
is a query tool that conducts database inquiries and returns
results based on predetermined user requirements.
With the assistance of EZ-Picken’s, these results can
then be transformed into nearly any format users want,
including spreadsheets, PDFs, text files and HTML. Another
BCD offering, Catapult, can then be used to automatically
distribute EZ-Picken’s files as e-mails or faxes or have them
sent to a printer or network-shared archive system.
“BCD has us covered,” Haynes says. “We have WebSmart
to create legacy app-integrated applications, Nexus Portal for
Customer: Noritake Co. Inc.
Head quarters: Fair Lawn, N.J.
Business: Distributor of everyday and fine-china
tableware
Ch
all enge: Putting a more modern face on its legacy
application while enhancing functionality
Solution:
Using a series of solutions from Business
Computer Design (BCD) to create a Web-friendly B2B site,
improving internal reporting capabilities and increasing staff
productivity
Hardware: An IBM System i* 525
SoftPortal,
ware
:BCD’s WebSmart, Nexus
EZ-Picken’s, Clover and
Catapult
our personalized intranet and tools like Clover, which can be
used directly from our intranet interface. And then there’s
Catapult, which distributes reports, and EZ-Picken’s, which
transforms reports into other usable forms. And all of it has
a nice, modern browser front end.”
As a result of all of this, Noritake’s customer-service
department gets fewer calls, e-mails and faxes, allowing
CSRs to take on other roles, including, for example, helping
out in the claims department. Additionally, the company has
saved a great deal of money, with the one-box BCD-based
solution coming in at a much lower price than the previously
proposed PC-ser ver based solution—with many fewer
maintenance hassles.
Capitalizing on It
The term “legacy application” should probably be stricken
from the IT lexicon because of the negative connotation
many people apply to it. That’s unlikely, because companies’
existing code and the logic built into it are gifts that keep
on giving.
This becomes especially apparent when IT departments
find the right tools to modernize their applications, giving
them new life while maintaining the years of expertise
that have gone into their development. As Noritake proved,
there are plenty of ways to build on what companies already
have in their IT environments. They just have to learn
how—using the right tools and no matter the platform—to
capitalize on it.
Jim Utsler, IBM Systems Magazine senior writer, has
been covering technology for nearly 20 years.
ibmsystemsmag.com/power
APRIL 2010
23