CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
Forbes: How A Spin-Off Spun Up Laser Fast
Every corporate spin-off is complex in its own right, but when financial high-wire acts meet national security, that complexity ratchets up to ten.
That was the case when optical communications technology company JDSU decided to split itself in two. One of the newly formed companies, Lumentum, consolidated the former JDSU high-speed optical communications products for telecom, data, and laser solutions for materials processing, into a new standalone business. Lumentum’s product exports are highly regulated by the US and countries around the world because of their potential military uses. Rather than use JDSU’s old trade management software to manage the compliance aspects of the business, executives decided to try something new.
In fact, Lumentum rebuilt its entire IT department in 2015 in preparation for becoming a fully independent company on August 5, 2015. It needed the global trade management function to be operational on that date so that it could continue exporting products. But with a much smaller IT team, Lumentum also didn’t have the resources to implement a customized application.
“We knew we wanted to be cloud-based because it has the advantages of no up-front investment and rapid deployment. And we also wanted to take a fresh look at our business processes,” says Sree Vaidyanathan, vice president of IT at Lumentum. “With so much going on at once, we needed a global trade management solution with minimal risk that could integrate out-of-the-box with Oracle E-Business Suite.”
JDSU had been largely an Oracle shop, and Lumentum was implementing a number of Oracle applications (including Oracle HCM Cloud and Oracle Product Information Management Cloud). Choosing Oracle Global Trade Management Cloud Service seemed like a natural extension of efforts already underway.
But if the soon-to-be-launched company chose Oracle’s cloud solution for global trade management, it would be the first in the world to go live with it. And it would need to operate flawlessly on day one.
Countdown Begins
With a compressed time schedule and no option for missing the launch date, Lumentum brought in Oracle partner Accelalpha to support the implementation. The project kicked off on January 15 with Accelalpha’s standardized methodology for global trade management projects—which provides a framework for implementation of both on-premises and cloud technologies. But because of the compliance issues involved with exporting laser technology, Lumentum had specific requirements.
“The system needed to prevent orders from going to a customer that had not yet provided the required documentation,” explained Nat Ganesh a partner in consulting services at Accelalpha. “Although this is a unique requirement and outside of our usual approach, we were able to use standard functionality in Oracle Global Trade Management Cloud Service to meet their needs—and to screen parties to ensure their documentation hadn’t expired.”
Once the Oracle Global Trade Management Cloud Service instance was made available for testing in February 2015, Accelalpha quickly got data flowing to it from Oracle E-Business Suite so the Lumentum global trade management team could understand how the new system looked and worked.
“The Lumentum team actually drove test cycles; they were the ones with their hands on the keyboard from the very first cycle,” Ganesh says. With such a short implementation time, there wasn’t the luxury of a long runway and, as with all projects, buy-in from end users is critical.
And because it was a cloud implementation, Accelalpha didn’t have to spend a lot of time provisioning the environment or training the IT department on how to configure the system.
In fact, Ganesh says, “We found that the cloud platform made it a more supportable solution from Lumentum’s perspective once we left. We didn’t have to spend as much time going into detail of customizations; we trained Lumentum’s global trade management team, and they were capable of supporting the solution with only occasional help from IT.”
And that was one of the critical goals for Lumentum. “We needed to ensure that the trade management team could manage compliance data effectively without involvement from IT,” Vaidyanathan said. “That team’s efficiency improved overall and the order fulfillment time was reduced because of the automation.”
Not only was the team trained and prepared by Lumentum’s first day; the application itself was ready to go live more than a month earlier than anticipated.
Tactical Progress
One of the critical concerns for Lumentum—and a key consideration for any company implementing a cloud solution—was the timing of patches for this business-critical application.
“Our shipments pick up at the end of the quarter, and we had to be sure that patches didn’t hit at that time,” said Lumentum’s Vaidyanathan. “This is the kind of tactical issue that is critical if you don’t line things up properly. It can end up interrupting your services.”
Accelalpha’s Ganesh also pointed to the importance of working with a partner or consultant that has a solid record of cloud implementations and is experienced in global trade management. “This is a complex compliance area where there is minimal room for error. Making mistakes can be very expensive,” he said.
For Lumentum, solid planning and Accelalpha’s expertise and established methodology made for a smooth launch in a complex situation where multiple integrated systems were being implemented simultaneously.
The company completed its first full quarter as an independent company at the end of 2015, and Vaidyanathan said it went well for Lumentum overall and for the IT and global trade management departments specifically, despite the many challenges of spinning out a company.
“There were some challenges around reporting, but nothing we couldn’t handle with the new system,” he said. “We’ve had no unplanned downtime, and we were processing orders from the first hour. We wanted to be sure our first product was processed and shipped before we celebrated. And we did!”