Midwest Manufacturers Pilot Move to Logic Apps for More Agile Businesses

Two of our manufacturing clients faced a similar problem: How to modernize their outdated and out-of-support platforms to something that improves business processes. The biggest concern for both companies? How to complete the migration of large amounts of customer data without disrupting their customer’s business-as-usual experience. The answer in both situations was SPR’s Logic Apps pilot, an offering that assesses the migration viability with one of the company’s clients before conducting a full migration.

Client Story: Technology Asset Re-Manufacturer

BizTalk to LogicApps scenario

A Chicago-based company focuses on recovering and re-manufacturing technology assets, giving their clients a way to recycle things like imaging solutions, printer supplies, and mobile devices. Before migrating the entirety of their partners – a significant number, at that – the manufacturer needed to make sure migration from BizTalk to Logic Apps would be seamless and effective. They selected SPR to run a pilot program focused on just one of their clients, with a goal to extend the migration across their customer base.

Pilot First, Please

SPR began the engagement with the manufacturing company by gathering information about their current applications and environments. During this session, SPR reviewed areas such as the company’s processes, servers, size and scope of their BizTalk environment, system scales and any interdependencies.

Next, we gathered operational information by determining the number of customers the manufacturer has, as well as their transaction volume, frequency, and monitoring and reporting. We compiled the information and prepared preliminary estimates for moving forward with the full BizTalk to Logic Apps migration.

We proposed an integration solution on Azure to provide scalability and cost savings, and so they could quickly onboard their clients to the new environment.

Results

Thanks to SPR’s vast integration experience defining strategy and roadmapping integration solutions on Azure, we were able to give the manufacturer ways to automate and orchestrate tasks and business processes. The company moved forward with an implementation plan that resulted in information now being sent easily between their enterprise and business partners with a platform supported by Microsoft.

Client Story: Infrastructure Equipment Manufacturer

Another Platform to LogicApps scenario

A global technology manufacturer based in the Midwest makes physical infrastructure equipment to support power and communications for their customers. They wanted something more reliable than their current incumbent platform, IBM Sterling. The client engaged SPR to assess the viability of making a move to Microsoft Azure Logic Apps for their Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) process.

Design the Pilot

SPR began the engagement by designing a Logic Apps pilot. We analyzed and designed an approach for building out the EDI processes as an Azure Logic App. This allowed SPR and the manufacturer to calculate the total cost of ownership and operation of the solution based on the envisioned full-production solution.

Build the Pilot

Once the design phase was completed, we began building a pilot that enables processing of one inbound and one outbound EDI transaction for one of the manufacturer’s trading partners. We migrated the EDI Maps to an acceptable Logic Apps format as necessary. Finally, we deployed to the client’s Azure subscription with instruction on how to deploy or redeploy the solution, involving the client so they would be able to move forward managing the solution once the pilot phase was complete.

Establish Approach to Expand

With a pilot phase successfully proving the viability of Logic Apps, SPR was re-engaged for a three-day assessment. We assessed the current solution’s design validity, providing document implementation best practices. We defined areas of risk and how to mitigate them, and provided recommendations on a full migration effort and how likely it would be to succeed.

For both manufacturing companies, SPR provided a pilot migration that helped the companies envision a move forward with their Logic Apps modernization – ultimately, leading to the automation of business processes that helped them improve the way they work.