Pipe-maker gets data flowing

Hynds Group in Brief

• Family-owned business employs 700 staff
• Operates from 40 locations in New Zealand and Australia
• Has 400 computer users
• Began as a pre-cast concrete product manufacturer in 1973 and today incorporates seven businesses supplying various infrastructure items
• Group sells 12,000 different products

"Previously it [information] was all over the show - it would take you a month of Sundays to find all the information you were looking for." Vijean Naidoo, Hynds Group IT manager

Imagine condensing the complexity of your entire business on to one computer screen - making important business processes available to staff at the click of a mouse on a customised home page. For managers intent on improving communications and eliminating paper from the business, such a system is the Holy Grail. For Hynds Group, one of the largest privately owned companies in New Zealand, it is reality.

Perhaps it's inevitable that a company that manufactures and distributes drainage products, among other things, would implement a computer system that smooths its workflow. With 700 staff in 40 locations, including three in Australia, keeping information moving through the company had been a challenge. But with the help of IBM® business partner Crossware, it has been solved through the development and implementation of a Lotus Notes-based intranet.

"One of the main benefits of the intranet is to keep everyone in touch with what is happening in the business," says Hynds Group IT manager Vijean Naidoo, who adds that it wasn't always like that. "With the size of the business, and so many people, it had been very difficult to communicate everything to the staff."

Now, when the company's 400 computer users fire up their PCs and laptops each day, the first thing they see is the main page of the intranet, from where they can catch up with company news, launch a web browser, word processor or spreadsheet, access the finance system and business applications, and find leave forms and other documents.

When running applications used to mean icons all over users' desktops, many business processes were paper-based and access to company information was a battle, the intranet represents a big leap forward.

"Previously it was all over the show - it would take you a month of Sundays to find all the information you were looking for," Naidoo says. "With this it's all on one page."

Day-by-day company performance is also displayed for all employees to see, in the form of graphs of sales and gross product versus budget. The system has an interactive component, as well, in that employees who have a tip to share with their fellow workers can send it to the intranet content manager to have it published on the main page.

"The user feedback has been excellent," Naidoo says, "it's all been very positive." Staff like the fact that they can readily search the intranet for information on the company's 12,000 products, and stay informed of company events through a built-in calendar. The system's staff directory also makes it simple to locate others within the company whom they need to contact.

On one level, Lotus Notes is just an email system. But its capabilities extend way beyond that to managing workflows so that paper-based processes can be eliminated. Naidoo says Hynds chose to work with Crossware because of its expertise at developing such systems.

"Crossware quickly identified the main issues. First, internal communication needed to be improved - team members didn't know where colleagues were or whether they were on leave or in the office.

"Second, although we had done a great deal of work on core documentation such as procedures and instructions, there was too much reliance on hard-copy data. Employees were printing documents out and keeping them in folders - we wanted to get rid of all that paperwork and move to a paperless system."

Another goal of the intranet was to provide a central, shared location for data, while also keeping track of different versions of documents. It was also designed to provide an automated request for improvement (RFI) system, to help the company give customers what they want.

"Crossware tackled these diverse issues with a solution that is not only easily accessible to all employees, but also provides tools and information that make their work easier - and more fun," Naidoo says.

While it has already delivered numerous benefits, including being accessible to users anywhere there is an internet connection, the system remains a work in progress. A key addition will be the inclusion of an automated capital expenditure sign-off system.

Naidoo says one way Hynds works at retaining staff is by being open with them, and the intranet is an important tool for that. "We try to keep people in the loop with what's happening in the company as much as possible and the intranet is fantastic for that."

Key Business Insights

Ready access to information and efficient internal systems set successful organisations apart from the also-rans. When a business is dispersed over a wide area, and has a complex collection of products, operating divisions and services, information flows are made all the harder.

A workflow system based on Lotus Notes can turn a far-flung organisation into an integrated whole, as at Hynds Group, a family-owned enterprise of several hundred employees in 40 locations, working within seven different businesses.

Hynds' Notes-based intranet ensures staff are up to date with company news, have seamless access to business applications and can work through many company processes without printing a page or exchanging numerous emails.

"Important documents on all kinds of policy and procedures are now shared centrally and these documents are kept under strict version control so everybody is using the right forms for HR procedures, the product library, sales and marketing documents, job applications, and so on," says group IT manager Vijean Naidoo.

Additional Resources

IBM's Lotus Notes is much more than just an email system. With Lotus Domino and Workflow software, it enables organisations to automate, monitor and manage their business processes:

www.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/workflow/

One of the aims of workflow systems is to replace paper-based processes with electronic ones. Does it work? IT market analyst IDC has been finding out:

www.idc.ca/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prAU21324708

IBM business partner Crossware, originally based in Denmark, has operated as a Lotus Notes developer in New Zealand for eight years, catering to customers throughout the Pacific, US and Britain:

crossware.co.nz/websites/crossware/crossware.nsf/vwWebPages/PGRM-5LF77Z