H.B. Fuller

Success Story

Novell Ngage provides blueprint for H.B. Fuller to reduce overall infrastructure costs for an estimated 80 percent internal rate of return.

Overview

Founded in 1887, H.B. Fuller is a worldwide manufacturer and marketer of specialty chemicals, including adhesives, sealants and coatings. The company's products are used in thousands of formulations and applications to strengthen and improve the performance of products consumers use every day.

Challenge

As a global organization with 4,700 employees in 36 countries, H.B. Fuller was facing an aging infrastructure, increased support, and escalating maintenance and licensing costs. The company had grown slowly, mainly through acquisitions, creating a complex and loosely controlled computing environment. H.B. Fuller knew that it could significantly reduce costs by standardizing and centralizing its infrastructure, and wanted to do it with existing hardware and software. By effectively leveraging its current investments, the company also wanted to reduce administrative costs and free up more of its IT staff to work on revenue-generating activities, such as new e-business initiatives.

H.B. Fuller sought the help of an experienced consulting team to analyze its global environment and provide specific recommendations to reduce overall infrastructure costs, while maximizing its existing technology.

Novell solution

"Everyone on the Novell team was a subject matter expert and brought great real-world experience, not just theories gleaned from the latest research reports. Novell has given us a blueprint of actionable projects and a solid financial case to back it up. It's pretty rare to be able to say that you can provide better service and more productivity for less money."

Chris Nelson
Director of Global Technical Services
H.B. Fuller

H.B. Fuller uses Novell NetWare, Novell GroupWise, and Novell ZENworks in a mixed Novell and Microsoft Windows environment, and was also evaluating Linux options. The company engaged Novell consulting to evaluate its existing infrastructure and recommend ways to reduce costs without negatively impacting service levels.

The Novell team began by meeting with H.B. Fuller managers to gather information about each department's operations, financials and personnel. The team developed a financial model to determine an internal rate of return, performed a risk analysis, and created an implementation road map.

"The Novell team focused specifically on hard costs, which is what we needed most for management," said Deb Brown, finance and security manager at H.B. Fuller. "Their models and methodologies are sound and tested. They created a comprehensive financial analysis that would have taken us six months to produce."

The Novell team quickly found the organization's pain points. For example, asset management had not been one of H.B. Fuller's hot buttons, but the Novell team discovered quickly that by better managing its leasing contracts and other aspects of lifecycle management, the company could see a high rate of return.

Throughout the project, the Novell team made recommendations that would leverage current investments, but also evaluated other options.

"We looked at a complete Microsoft environment, but were concerned about escalating licensing costs, as well as maintaining stability, security and ease of management," said Chris Nelson, director of Global Technical Services at H.B. Fuller. "There are definite technical and financial advantages with Novell. We estimate a savings of 30-40 percent in licensing costs alone."

With its existing Novell solution, H.B. Fuller discovered that it already had the technology it needed to consolidate its global operations. The company can use the Branch Office appliance (a component of Novell NetWare) to intelligently consolidate branch office infrastructure, giving users the resources they need without complex infrastructure or expensive overhead.

"With Novell, we don't have to spend more to bolt third-party applications to our operating system - we get the whole package," said Nelson.

By extending its use of Novell eDirectory, H.B. Fuller can implement a secure identity management solution throughout its enterprise, significantly reducing the amount of time and resources required to manually update user information. Granting users a single ID and password to access information will give the right people access to right information, increasing the security of the company's data and patented formulas.

"The Novell consultants were extremely professional and hard-working," said Brown. "They analyzed information in a short amount of time before asking qualitative questions that reflected their expertise. I didn't have to do any hand-holding, which is rare among consulting organizations."

Results

In four weeks, Novell consultants clearly defined H.B. Fuller's priorities for change to significantly reduce overall infrastructure costs and achieve an 80 percent internal rate of return. H.B. Fuller can also free up nearly 20 percent of its IT staff to work on revenue-generating projects, such as new e-business initiatives. The company can do it all by effectively using existing technology, and while keeping licensing and maintenance costs under control.

"Everyone on the Novell team was a subject matter expert and brought great real-world experience, not just theories gleaned from the latest research reports," said Nelson. "Novell has given us a blueprint of actionable projects and a solid financial case to back it up. It's pretty rare to be able to say that you can provide better service and more productivity for less money."