Success story
James Hardie Building
Products Inc.
Industry• Building Products

Solution• OpenText™ B2B Managed Services

Building products leader
renovates its business networkwith cloud-based B2B platform
James Hardie delivers savings and supports growthwith OpenText B2B Managed Services

Results
Cloud-based systemeliminates costly hardware
and software requirements
Hosted solution delivers
scalability and support for
global growth
Efficient, secure exchange ofinformation for greater network
efficiency and visibility“We wanted to align with a strategic partner who offered aplatform that would allow us the operational scalability togive us more velocity as we start globalizing our operation.”
Wayne Ly

Business System DirectorJames Hardie

Building products leader renovates its business network with cloud-based B2B platform

James Hardie Inc. is the global leader in fiber cement building
products. It operates in markets around the world, withmanufacturing operations in the United States, Australia, New
Zealand and the Philippines. Building on founder James Hardie’sinnovative, entrepreneurial legacy, fiber cement siding products
were invented as a more durable, lower-maintenance alternative towood and vinyl siding. The company continues to be the industry
innovator, spending more than US $20 million annually in R&D. The
business employs more than 2,500 people and generates revenueof more than US $1.5 billion a year.

Background

With a legacy dating back to 1888, James Hardie building products
combine innovation and versatility to offer a variety of design possibilities.
Currently installed on more than 5.5 million homes in North America, theseproducts have earned a favorable reputation within the industry and havebeen installed in some of the United States’ most prestigious projects.
Innovation has been vital to maintaining a leading position in the building
materials industry and to positioning itself for future growth around theworld. Knowing that innovative technologies can change the way thecompany engages with its customers, James Hardie modernized its
electronic data interchange (EDI) platform with OpenText B2B Managed
Services to better serve its customers and fuel growth.

Challenges

Modernizing the business network

James Hardie is primarily a business-to-business (B2B) company, sellingits products to national and regional home builders through a network oflarge distributors and independent wholesalers. In addition, it is growing

in the repair and remodel (R&R) market with its products being soldthrough major retailers.
James Hardie was managing its core customers via an aging EDI
platform, but to expand and optimize its operations in Europe, Asia andother countries, the system needed renovating. The technology wasoutdated and could not be easily extended globally, posing a significant
business risk for global expansion plans.
Wayne Ly, Business System Director at James Hardie, described the older
technology: “The legacy systems that we had were on-premises andthe hardware and EDI technology were starting to get older.” Using EDI,James Hardie replaces manual, paper-based business communication
with standard, electronic document exchange.
The company’s plan was to modernize its EDI platform with a solutionthat could support expansion requirements and deliver cost savingsand efficiencies. Leveraging a cloud-based solution allows thecompany to save hardware costs and overhead related to supporting
older technologies, as well as decrease the time to market when they
set up new customers on the EDI network.
To optimize and scale its operations not just in the U.S., but around theworld, the company also needed a solution that could take on some ofits EDI support operations as the anticipated growth would bring newcustomers into the EDI system. The team was concerned that existing
EDI staffing levels would not be able to support an expanded in-housesolution across multiple time zones and languages. “I think the shortcoming of our existing platform was that, from a support perspective,
we only have one EDI analyst. If we are thinking about branching thisplatform out and consolidating our worldwide operations to just oneplatform, one person cannot support it 24/7/365 days a year,” said Ly.

“Now, partnered withB2B Managed Services,
we’ve been able to scale
up our operations andserve the market.”Wayne Ly

Business System Director
James Hardie

Building products leader renovates its business network with cloud-based B2B platform

The company decided that an outsourced, managed services solution
made the most sense. “We wanted to align with a strategic partner
who offered a platform that would allow us the operational scalability
to give us more velocity as we start globalizing our operation,” said Ly.

Solution

A leading cloud-based B2B network solution
The team evaluated several possible solutions before deciding on B2BManaged Services. “One of the reasons that we chose OpenText isbecause, in terms of Global Shared Services (GSS) and EDI, OpenText
is one of the leaders in the space,” said Ly. The managed services model
provided by OpenText was a cost-effective solution to manage James
Hardie’s day-to-day B2B network needs, including onboarding, mapping,translation, monitoring and trading partner enablement processes.
With the company’s plans to expand into Europe and bring on newcustomers and partners from European operations, OpenText global
coverage was also a factor in the decision. “The objective as we movetoward a global operation, from a business and IT stand- point, isto ensure that we can support our business globally. We wanted tooptimize operations from a single platform for EDI globally and havea strategic partner like OpenText to help us manage that on the EDIside,” said Ly.
The team at James Hardie has completed the first phase of the implementation, with U.S. operations now up and running. “It’s been runningvery well, with more than 50 trading partners onboarded,” said Ly.
The next phase is a roll-out in Europe, where operations are growing andsix or seven high volume customers are ready to onboard. In the nearterm, the company anticipates onboarding between 100 and 150 trading
partners, adding more as the business continues to grow.

Benefits

With B2B Managed Services, James Hardie now benefits from theplatform’s business and IT value.
Scalability and savings in the cloudMoving to a cloud-based solution was part of James Hardie’s overall
strategy. “We are now making strides in that area with OpenText andlooking for other opportunities within the business to leverage cloudtechnology, including helping us to scale out in areas where there is
not enough infrastructure to support an on-premises solution,” said Ly.
Some of the key benefits of the cloud solution are related to total costof ownership. The company is seeing cost savings derived from theoutsourced model, now that it no longer has to maintain all the resources,
hardware and manpower internally to manage and support a solution.
Supporting global operations
B2B Managed Services will help James Hardie expand its trading partner
ecosystem and manage the day-to-day operation of its businessnetwork. The solution’s global onboarding capabilities, multilingual
support and regional transaction expertise were all areas that the teamwanted to leverage. “When we started looking at a global strategy, weasked ourselves questions about how many delivery centers we haveand in which regions and time zones. We also determined where ourgrowth would be in what countries and what EDI capabilities we havein those countries to support new customers as we onboard them inour business,” said Ly.
The OpenText solution plays a major role in supporting these global
expansion efforts. “Now, partnered with B2B Managed Services, we’vebeen able to scale up our operations and serve the market,” said Ly.

“From the operationside, the EDI alerts
give us better, broader
monitoring capabilitiesof all the transactions
flowing in and out of
our environment andother KPIs aroundvolume transaction
metrics as well.”Wayne Ly

Business System Director
James Hardie

Building products leader renovates its business network with cloud-based B2B platform

He added that while they still rely on their internal EDI analyst, he no longer
carries the entire burden alone: “As we bring more customers and trading
partners online, he is better able to manage problems, whereas before
he had to work through the full problem resolution flow by himself. Now,
the solution has reduced the SLA issues for us, which is great for ourcustomers and enhances our customer experience.”
Enhanced features deliver value
The team at James Hardie has seen early benefits from the many
features of the OpenText solution, including rapid onboarding ofpartners onto the system and document tracking. For example, nowthe team can check the status of every EDI transaction exchanged withbusiness partners to quickly identify which transactions were sent andreceived, in the event of any issues.
They were also able to set up alerts to be notified when anything unexpected happens. “It has given us more capabilities from a support
perspective. From the operation side, the EDI alerts give us better,broader monitoring capabilities of all the transactions flowing in andout of our environment and other KPIs around volume transaction
metrics as well,” said Ly.

Smooth rollout with strong supportThough they are in the early days of implementation, the team has
been pleased with the smooth transition to the new solution. “The newsystem is running very well. It has been up and running for several
months and there have been minimal issues,” said Ly. He added thatwhen issues do come up, the team gets strong support from OpenText:“We use the support portal and we get very quick responses
whenever we log tickets. From that aspect, I think the adoption ofB2B Managed Services has gone very well. The support portal isclear and concise and the SLAs are very good.”
With the U.S. implementation running smoothly, the team at James
Hardie looks forward to the European rollout. With B2B Managed
Services to keep its business network running smoothly, James Hardie
can focus on maintaining its reputation for excellence in both quality
and service and fueling growth around the world.

About OpenText

OpenText, The Information Company,
enables organizations to gain insight
through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information aboutOpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.
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