Case Study: Inforonics BTS

Embedded Reactor 5 Solution Provides Midwest Publisher With Scalable Infrastructure For Future Growth

Meet the Inforonics, BTS

Headquartered in Littleton, Massachusetts, BTS specializes in helping enterprises solve specific business issues using the most appropriate and cost-effective technologies.

The Business Challenge

In 2003, the publisher's management team decided to re-evaluate their production and publishing processes. They sought a solution that would scale with their operational throughput and assist them with expected growth - without adding further human resources. As they are all highly customized, the publisher knew their order and publishing processes would be difficult to automate.

For example, processing and publishing just a single course book generally involves multiple research and approval tasks spanning a wide variety of people, departments, systems and external companies. Previously, the publisher had relied upon a variety of manual procedures to manage their processes. In order to increase effi- ciency, however, the publisher knew they would need to automate these steps without compromising security and control.

This would also provide the publisher better visibility into order statuses to better manage the sales process, customer service and production schedules.

The Technical Challenge

The publisher was already running several core applications including:

• Internal content repositories
• Off-the-shelf scanning applications
• And post-production applications.

With so much invested in their pre-existing printing infrastructure and multiple technologies already embedded into their processes, The publisher needed a solution that would both leverage the infrastructure already in place, while safely communicating with partner systems.

While the ability to manage workflow across multiple applications, locations, departments and other businesses would help bridge the gaps, this level of automation would require a great deal of integration in order to accommodate their custom-tailored procedures. In addition, the solution would need to incorporate complex permission structures and business logic to manage and facilitate the workflow across the various people and companies involved.

Essentially, all business activities starting with sales through the physical shipment of orders would be impacted and the solution selected would need to be very flexible.

Finding the Right Partner & Solution

To assist them in their search, the publsher turned to their consulting partner, Inforonics BTS. BTS began by analyzing potential workflow solutions that would automate the publisher's publishing processes while providing the optimal amount of visibility across the various interaction points and appropriate permissions structure.

BTS then examined applications already deployed within the publisher's infrastructure to determine their workflow capabilities, but none offered the ability to communicate across multiple internal and partner systems. They also evaluated several out-of-the-box publishing solutions available in the marketplace, but none provided the flexibility and rich functionality the publisher and their partners required.

BTS selected Oak Grove System's Reactor 5 solution for the publisher because of its ability to provide an agile, standardsbased architecture that could be integrated across multiple systems with only minimal involvement from their in-house IT team, it's rich, flexible functionality, and its ability to provide the high level of visibility required by its employees, departments and partner organizations - without compromising security.

Reactor 5 provided a proven solution to coordinate human and system tasks that Inforonics could use to solve the publisher's custom publishing challenge.

The Workflow-Centric Custom Publishing Solution

BTS recommended and integrated the following components into the exact application the publisher required:

• A custom web-based order entry front end
• Custom web-based content management systems
• A custom production management system
• A custom publishing system
• Oak Grove System's Reactor 5 Business Process Management System for work- flow and orchestration
• A JBoss application server
• And a MS SQL server database.

Deploying Reactor 5 within the above custom application for the publisher, BTS was able to successfully coordinate and more fully automate the publisher's coursepack production. The Reactor 5 based solution was up and running in just a couple months and allowed the publisher to more efficiently:

• Set up custom orders
• Obtain price quotes
• Perform pre-press approval
• Electronically assemble and print orders on demand
• Schedule production
• Catalog and store content files
• Monitor orders
• Load source hardcopy materials
• And archive orders.

The Technical Solution

The Reactor 5 business process management solution provided BTS a platform-independent environment to facilitate processes across the multiple systems that were already in place at the publisher and their partners. Reactor 5 provided:

• A powerful, user-friendly interface for process definition
• A flexible architecture, which allowed the system to be extended via Java, JavaScript, Python and other languages
• A small footprint on a J2EE platform requiring few IT resources and an almost immediate implementation, along with ease of development
• Standard sets of APIs for easy integration accessible via XML/HTTP, SOAP, RMI and EJB
• And standards-based integration: database neutrality and access via JDBC, directory via JNDI and authentication via JAAS.

Reactor 5 also gave BTS the complex business logic needed to provide structure and visibility across processes and coordinate the multiple approvals in the publisher's coursepack production schedule.

The Results

Embedding Reactor 5 into a custom application allowed BTS to provide thepublisher with a scalable infrastructure that would accommodate its impending growth. The custom, Reactor 5 based solution helped the publisher realize the following results:

• Management visibility into statuses
• The ability to provide appropriate levels of progress visibility across individuals, departments, external partners and customers
• Remote access to relevant sales and inventory information for a geographically distributed sales force
• Enhanced, traceable communications
• Shorter production schedules to better satisfy customers
• Availability of key resources for strategic business initiatives and customer service
• Complete audit log for copyright compliance verification
• Labor efficiencies, especially during peaks
• And cost savings from streamlined workflow and processes and reduced redundancies.

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