A Balancing Act: Managing Oracle Applications Scott Dines Oracle Systems Manager Boral Bricks Inc.

History and Current Operations

About Boral Bricks, Inc. Largest Clay Brick Manufacturer in the USA US Headquarters in Atlanta, GA with administrative offices in Augusta, GA More than doubled in size since Plants in 8 states 50+ Distribution and sales offices in 11 states 1.5 billion brick sold FY’03; 1.6 billion brick Budget FY ‘04 20% Sales Growth from FY ’03 to Budget FY ’04 (Acquired largest customer Feb ’03) Employees

Current Status – Oracle Deployment Financials Live on Oracle 11i ( plus mini-packs)  General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, & Fixed Assets Oracle Process Manufacturing ( plus mini-pack I)  Production Management, Quality, Inventory, Purchasing, & Order Fulfillment 71 locations across Southern United States  21 Manufacturing Plants (Mining to Finished Goods)  50 Distribution and Sales Sites (23 just implemented in 4 months) Supporting Boral Industries and it’s subsidiaries (Six Organizations with five Sets of Books) Boral BricksUSTILE Boral Material Technologies Inc Boral Bricks Direct Savannah Classic Stone

Server Hardware: HP / UX Wide Area: Fractional T-1 (>=256kb & >8k Cir) 100 GB Data Area Clients: both NC and PC with Windows Terminal Server for Wide Area 30 GB Sales Reporting Data Warehouse 3+ Test, Training & Acceptance Environments Technical Configuration NodeCPU Speed Memory Database MHz 16 GB Middle Tier MHz 12 GB

Support for Oracle Applications at Boral Bricks 2 Database & 1 UNIX Administrators 8 Developers & Applications Support 2 1/2 Network, Telecommunications and Other Technical Administration 2 Help Desk Support (Moving to 3 at Help Desk) 2 Managers ( SD & TS )

Staffing Levels and Oracle Expertise Staff Devoted to Oracle Support  9 System Analysts / Developers / Manager  2 Database Administrators. Combined working experience of staff  74 years with Oracle technology  49 years with Oracle applications  157 years with information technology

Management Team Active in IT Standing IT Steering Committee  Consists of VP and Director level  Meets every weeks. (During large projects meets every 4 weeks)  Goals and Objectives  track status of current projects  identify key issues facing business  keep management team looking forward with respect to technology

Major Milestones for Oracle at Boral (See Handout) Financials Fast Forward Oracle 10.7 Prod16.1 SC  AP, GL (Nov 97) AR, FA (May 98)  Additional Sets of Books – BMTI & Boral Industries (July 98) USTile (Feb 99) & Savannah Classic Stone (June 02) Process Manufacturing (Define, Build and Test) (Sept 99 to May 01) 10.7 to upgrade (Apr 01) Process Manufacturing (Live May 01 to Dec 01)  Production Management, Formula Management, Quality, Inventory, Order Entry & Shipping, Purchasing, and Costing (Finished Goods only) to (plus mini-packs) upgrade (Nov 02) Franklin Brick Acquisition 23 additional sites (Apr 03 to Aug 03)

Use of Consultants at Boral Determination, Management, and Results

Our Goal with Consultants Only engaged for knowledge transfer and business process improvement  Never used to “do the work”  Used to advise and train Boral staff  Paired one-on-one with Boral staff (IT or key User) Only use when Boral IT and “business” has committed resources to project (people, time, and money)

Consulting versus Internal Staffing Large projects; Internal Boral Staff moved out of positions and onto project team  Used Consulting to train and guide Boral Project Team  Project management Boral responsibility assisted by consulting group  Example: Process Manufacturing Project we dedicated 7 people full time (2 yrs)

Boral’s Use of Consultants Fast Forward Financials: Configuration 1 st two sets of books on 10.7 (100 days) – Oracle Consulting Assist in define and build Process Manufacturing (200 days) – Oracle Consulting 23 Reports for Process Manufacturing (45 days) – Sierra Atlantic (Outsourced: India) Functional Assistance – 10.7 to (45 days) – Oracle Consulting

Boral’s Use of Consultants Purchasing Configuration (45 days) –SBI & Company OPM Customization work (80 days) – Sierra Atlantic 1 st Portal Installation (5 days) – Sierra Atlantic Tuning Work (5 days) - Oracle Consulting

Other Lessons Learned Interview, interview, interview Be quick to fire Build relationships with one or two key partners, but keep talking to other vendors Use internal staff for majority of customization work

The Payoff Configuration and Go Live for Process completed internally from consulting work Upgrade completed internally Support of all custom code internal Knowledge base of staff of custom code, configurations and business allows us to react to changes in business KEY: Not dependent on any external parties to run your business

Next Steps

Future Projects 9i Database upgrade Personal Web Pages for Executive and Line Managers Containing Both KPI and Business Intelligence Data New Order Management CRM & E-commerce (Business to Business)

“wow” Everyone is looking for the “wow”. doing the basic things right, But the “wow” factor comes from doing the basic things right, all the time!