Specialist paper manufacturer James Cropper plc knew that replacement of its bespoke internal IT system could mean sacrificing some of the highly tailored functionality developed over many years. However, the inherent risks of the legacy system and the need to move the business forward presented a compelling case for change.

The company embarked on a system replacement programme based on SSI’s TROPOS supply chain solution and the TROPOS Developer Toolkit. This gives the company a solid platform for expansion into new areas of the business. It also provides the flexibility to customise – without the constraints of a bespoke system.

Established in 1845 and located in the picturesque Lake District, James Cropper is Europe’s leading manufacturer of coloured and specialist paper. Its products are typically used in quality packaging and exclusive stationery. Its customers generally order quantities of two or three tons – relatively small in paper industry terms and challenging to achieve profit. Nevertheless, James Cropper sees around 70% of its turnover from its specialist papers – the balance coming from its two complementary divisions which offer converted paper and technical fibre-based products.

James Cropper’s legacy system for sales, finance and production had developed over many years. The company had even acquired the rights to the source code, making it a bespoke system in the truest sense. Bill Thomson, IT manager, says while the old green screen technology was meeting most needs there was growing concern: “All the knowledge about the system was internal – and the people who had that knowledge were getting older.”

Packaged solution to maintain competitive edge

The company decided to seek a packaged solution that would maintain its competitive edge through further sharpening its focus on customer service and enhancing efficiency where possible.

James Cropper began the process of defining the requirements of its three divisions based on clear business objectives and measures. The strongest drivers were to remove the dependency on internal skills for the legacy systems, improve the level of customer service, and converge the IT solution across all divisions.

The company took a far-sighted view, specifying a requirement for system development tools, so it could develop its own functionality and address requirements for web enablement and legacy system interfacing.

A core team of key business division personnel – plus IT business analysts – was assembled, with Bill Thomson as project manager. The business division members were made available to the project three days a week and this ensured that a clear solution design could be developed. Bill Thomson says: “We went through a fairly substantial investigation, a very open process, to arrive at a statement of requirement. We looked at the market place, got down to a list of four and finally selected TROPOS. The users did the scoring – we simply checked that it was technically sound and fitted some of the things we wanted such as the package being up to date and running on modern hardware.”

The initial stage of the business process review focused on ensuring that the current processes were questioned and that new improved processes, which would deliver the business objectives, were defined, agreed and documented. This highlighted areas where bespoke elements at both server and client level were required. It also allowed a clear definition of the level and complexity of legacy system interfacing to be defined and mapped.

James Cropper also felt that because the solution would be both sophisticated and unique to their specialised business, a phased approach to system implementation would be required.

Complex environment with special challenges

Once TROPOS had been selected the implementation programme was started, adapting the standard SSI implementation approach to suit the team culture that existed in James Cropper and ensure business buy-in was achieved through all levels of personnel and across all divisions.

The company would implement a solution that contained an interface to the TROPOS advanced planning system, S-Plan. This system had originally been developed by Greycon to support the specialities within the paper industry. The S-Plan system would provide, for the first time, an end-to-end planning system for production, thereby delivering one of the key business objectives.

The original implementation, in the sales area, produced valuable lessons. Bill Thomson says: “It was taking too long and was too cumbersome. We were trying to use native TROPOS – which had been a deliberate decision – but we found that we had to use too many individual transactions.”

As a result, the decision was taken to use the TROPOS development toolkit to configure the screens to follow the unique business processes at James Cropper. The time and effort taken in selecting TROPOS with its strong core functionality, transaction flexibility and excellent development toolset was worthwhile.

James Cropper created a special team to complete the user interface development. Three new members of the IT staff were trained in Visual Basic and the TROPOS SDK development tool, thereby arming them with the skills they would need to develop the user interface. The business requirements and functional specifications for the user interface were written by the systems analysts. The user interface development team then used these to create an intuitive user interface that walked the user through the selected business process.

During the development of the user interface, the need to develop new interface methodologies into the legacy system and the creation of several new areas of functionality were highlighted. These were easily developed using the tools available. The overriding factor used to determine the end of development phase, was that the interface meet the user acceptance criteria.

Completed in early 2003, the user interface then underwent significant testing and process simulation.

Unique screens for a unique business

Bill Thomson says: “We have now written a complete front end that matches our business processes – it’s totally user friendly, menu driven and intuitive. Underneath this ’James Cropper’ front end we drive the standard TROPOS transactions.

“The simple process of raising a new sales order actually runs up to 200 TROPOS transactions behind the scenes – so that we can do ‘anything to anything’.

“The advantage we now have is that we’ve also hidden the legacy systems. So, where users might have logged into two or three different systems to do things, we can now drive all those databases from the same front end.”

He says: “That is strategic. We are now looking for other best-of-breed packages, that fit into the same bed.”

James Cropper developed all of the legacy system interfacing in-house, partly using the TROPOS TIGI interface solution. The interfacing was specified by the business analysts who had expert knowledge of the legacy system.

The new interface went live in mid-2003, for sales order entry and progress recording. The planning system follows.

Bill Thomson says: “We will not be planning the papermaking machines because of the way they operate, but we will be scheduling the downstream finishing processes – coating, embossing, guillotining and packing – which have become more complex and more difficult to schedule manually.

“One of the problems is our product. It’s easy on standard products when we are selling from stock, or if business comes in month after month from the same customers. But in TROPOS terms the product is different if we cut it a centimetre wider or longer or if the grammage is slightly more.

“For much of our business we don’t have previously-defined product – we have to start the product definition from scratch. It’s even more difficult because we sometimes put the order on to the paper machines and make the paper before customers tell us what size they want. So we also have to be able to modify the product while it is in process in the mill.”

Bill Thomson says the second implementation has been much better. “It’s up and running – and we’re putting in more powerful hardware to improve performance.

External support a key benefit

“The main benefit is that we are no longer dependent on legacy knowledge. The core of the system is supported externally and therefore we need only worry about the use of the package to fit our business. SSI is up with technology – as it changes they can take advantage of it and offer us even better facilities.

“What I hope will happen once we are over the initial hump of replacing the legacy systems is that we can look at areas of the business that we have never tackled before. Given the facilities in TROPOS already, we will need to plug them in and make them work. We can move around the business and be much more responsive to needs.”

TROPOS has also produced indirect benefits, says Bill Thomson. “We now do much more careful mill instructions. We gather much more data upfront, and qualify it, so that the product definition given to the mill is much better. This cuts wastage and delivers better speed, because people are not having to double check and guess. It’s a re-engineering benefit – but we always said implementing TROPOS had to be a catalyst. If all we had done was to mechanise what we already did, we would be missing a lot of opportunities.”