Lessons learned: A step-wise implementation for Application Rationalization

Lessons learned
A step-wise implementation for application rationalization
Maik Schulz / November 16th, 2018 / EA Connect Days 2018

© NORMA GROUP SE. All rights reserved.
About me
23.11.2018 / Maik Schulz / EA Connect Days 2018 2
Maik Schulz
Director Application Management
NORMA Group Holding GmbH
4 years at NORMA Group
Both consulting and industry background in IT Management and EAM (15 years)
Development and architecture background (5 years)

© NORMA GROUP SE. All rights reserved. 23.11.2018 / Maik Schulz / EA Connect Days 2018 3
01
NORMA Group in brief
02
Architecture management challenges
03
Introducing LeanIX (2017)
04
Increasing the footprint (2018)
05
Critical mass generates interest
06
Outlook on 2019: governance
Agenda

NORMA Group in a nutshell
Company Presentation - 2018
NORMA Group is a global market leader in Engineered Joining
Technology that provides joining solutions for its customers by
meeting their individual needs. Driven by global and technological
megatrends, NORMA Group supports its customers in designing and
producing the right systems to gain competitive advantage.
NORMA Group Business Model

Delivers to more than
10,000 customers in 100
countries
NORMA Group key facts
Offers more than 40,000
innovative joining solutions in
three product categories:
Clamp, Connect, Fluid
Employees > 9,000
worldwide
Operates a global network of
more than 29
manufacturing facilities
Numerous sales and
distribution sites across
Europe, the Americas and
Asia-Pacific
Global market and
technology leader in joining
technology
Headquarters in Maintal
near Frankfurt/Main,
Germany
Sales of about
EUR 1,017 million in
2017
Listed on the Frankfurt stock
exchange since 2011 and
included in the MDAX index
since 2013

A history of tradition and excellence
Merger
ABA and
Rasmussen to
NORMA Group IPO
SDAX listing
MDAX listing
Founded by
Rasmussen
Production
starts
Opening
of head-
quarters
in Maintal
Acquisition
Breeze, USA
Foundation
NORMA Japan
Acquisition
Craig Assembly,
USA
Acquisition
Connectors
Verbindungs-
technik,
Switzerland
Acquisition
Davydick & Co,
Australia
Foundation
NORMA
China II
Foundation
NORMA China
Foundation
NORMA India
Foundation
NORMA Mexico
Acquisition
R.G. Ray, USA
Foundation
NORMA Korea
Foundation
NORMA Malaysia
Foundation
NORMA Turkey
Foundation
NORMA Russia
Acquisition
J-V shares, Spain
Acquisition
J-V shares, India
Opening Sales
& Competence
Center, Brazil
Foundation
NORMA Thailand
Foundation
NORMA Serbia
Acquisition
Chien Jin Plastic,
Malaysia
Acquisition
Nordic
Metalblok, Italy
Acquisition
Groen
Bevestigings-
materialen,
Netherlands
Acquisition
Variant, Poland
Acquisition
Guyco,
Australia
Foundation
NORMA Brazil
Acquisition
Five Star, USA
Acquisition
NDS, USA
1949 1955 1973 2006 2007 2008 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Integration
NDS, USA
Acquisition
Autoline, France
2017
Acquisition
Lifial, Portugal
Acquisition
Fengfan, China
2018
Acquisition
Kimplas, India
Acquisition
Statek, Germany

Product categories for Fluid Handling solutions
CONNECT CLAMP
FLUID
PLASTQUICK
FIX FLOW CONTROL
DRAIN

ICT at NORMA Group
23.11.2018 / Maik Schulz / EA Connect Days 2018
CIO
Infrastructure
& Operations
Application
Management
Solution
Architecture
Business
Solutions
Technical
Solutions
Information
Management
Global
Service Desk
EMEA Americas APAC
CIO Office
Risk &
Security

02 Architecture management challenges

Starting point and direction
• Until 5 years ago, ICT at NORMA Group was decentralized, with regional (EMEA, Americas, APAC) and local responsibilities
and organizational structures, and low drive towards harmonization in the application landscape
• Blooming shadow IT, not all IT-related budgets were under ICT control, not even for the large group applications
• Documentation was better in some countries, worse in others
• Frequent acquisitions led to a very diverse application landscape (our application zoo)
Direction: standardization, harmonization, centralization
• ICT is centralized since 5 years, including responsibility for all IT-related activities
• All applications are managed by ICT, all infrastructure is managed by ICT, all IT-related budgets are covered by ICT
• And thus the journey began…
Decentralised history, low architecture management maturity level

© NORMA GROUP SE. All rights reserved. 23.11.2018 / Maik Schulz / EA Connect Days 2018 12
Excel- & PowerPoint-based “EAM” until end of 2016
V1
V2

The beginning: populating the applications
• The first target in 2017 was to get rid of Excel for keeping track of applications, and get a critical mass of data to make it useful
• We used two workspaces, one “Release Production” workspace for the “real” data, and a “Demo” workspace to try things out
• We started with our Excel list of applications, used the export feature from the LeanIX Application Inventory to see what the structure for
importing an Excel needs to look like, modified our Excel, and imported to start with ca. 300 applications (it took many iterations to get the
data in shape). This gave us application names, and in a few cases, descriptions.
Step 1
Our best friends
when we started

• Next up we (our solution architect and I) triaged the applications to fill in User Group (*) data from the original Excel. We had this
information already, and did not want to lose it when we stopped using the Excel. Also, in the second version of the application
Excel, we had information about which processes are supported by an application, so we used this as a basis for Business
Capabilities. This enabled the Application Landscape and Application Matrix reports in LeanIX.
Step 2

• On top, we created application-level tags to signify if we wanted to get rid of an application (eliminate) as part of our
harmonization, if we tolerated it (because there was no defined standard application), if it was only the wrong version (update), if
it was indeed our target application (nowadays renamed to “invest”), or if it needed more clarification. This allows us to show a
target Application Landscape, and for each User Group how far away they are.
• A second tag shows which group in ICT is responsible for the application: Regional ICT, Application Management, Infrastructure
& Operations, CIO Office, or if we keep it outside ICT (shop floor IT mostly). This gives a graphic view to the Regional ICT
Directors on how much better their live could be if they got rid of the applications that they are responsible for.
Step 3

The result: an application roadmap
• After we updated application life-cycles, and defined successors,
we could use the Application Roadmap report, which shows us
where we are on our application rationalization path. The
Application Matrix helps us define projects to replace non-
standard applications by showing us where to look.
Step 4

The beginning: what we left out
• I really like the idea of the Business Capability Cost report. It would make for some nice discussion
(“why are we spending as much on HR applications, as on Business Development, or on
Logistics?”). So, we captured some of this data, but stopped after a few entries. We already have
good transparency on what we are spending in ICT on different services. But getting this data out
of the current systems and into LeanIX, or worse, keeping LeanIX updated manually with that
same information, seemed like a bad idea.
• Business Processes are normally modeled in a BPMN tool, which gives you a graphical
representation. We still have them in MS Office, and not all of them. I don’t see the value of
connecting applications to Business Processes in LeanIX, at least not at our current maturity level
wrt BPM.
• We played around with Technology Stacks. So far, I haven’t seen compelling value from designing
a good stack separation and maintaining this data in LeanIX. At least not for NORMA Group,
YMMV.
• We never even started using Project fact sheets. Projects are maintained elsewhere, and it works
well enough. There is no compelling case for us to maintain project information in LeanIX.
We are not using every type of fact sheet

04 Increasing the footprint (2018)

Using more fact sheet types
• We still had our interfaces Excel, with lots of fields that do not
exist in LeanIX (and that we don’t want to be visible to
everyone, like network paths of batch file directories etc).
• We started to add interfaces (and changing naming
conventions for the Interface fact sheet several times) still in
2017, at first without using Data Object fact sheets.
• In 2018, we started to investigate how we can find a good
structure on our SharePoint intranet that we can “outsource”
detailed information to, but have LeanIX as the central point of
entry for information. Now we have the first iteration, and link to
it from the Documents tab on the Interface fact sheet
Final Excel to get rid of

The surprising appearance of GDPR
• A lot of people probably remember May 25th of this year, thanks to GDPR going
into full effect. So do we.
• We already the vast majority of our applications document, and a fair amount of
our interfaces. To be able to answer requests based on GDPR (e.g. “Which data
about me is in which applications, and where in the world?”), we had to introduce
Data Object fact sheets (we had been playing around with them, but not
seriously, they need a good structural design), as well as Provider fact sheets
(which, unfortunately, are linked to IT Component fact sheets). On top we added
tags to indicate handling of personal data, and special categories of personal
data to the Data Object fact sheets. Interfaces can have a tag “GDPR-relevant”.
Building on what we had

Gathering lots of data quickly
• In order to gather information on which application processes which
data, we had to scale out.
• Based on Business Capabilities, we added global process owners as
subscribers to the Application fact sheets. For them we extracted an
Excel of applications that fall into their area of responsibility, and asked
them to name functional application owners.
• We added the functional application owners as responsible subscribers,
and used surveys to inquire about Data Objects and Interfaces.
Using surveys

05 Critical mass generates interest

Requests to use LeanIX from other ICT areas
• LeanIX is the best source of information for the 1st level of our global services desk. Before LeanIX, in many cases they had no
information on a local application and cases took much longer to resolve.
• We are adding a technical application owner subscription to Application fact sheets to aid the service desk in finding the right
person to talk to.
• The next wish list item is to link to documents with our SLOs for applications, documentation, etc. All this will be provided via
SharePoint, using LeanIX as the entry, and linking from the Documents tab.
Infrastructure & Operations
• Would like to connect their database of servers and other infrastructure components to LeanIX. Will be investigated next year.
Risk & Compliance
• Just started adding information about ISO certifications of our XaaS providers, their audit findings etc. to the Documents tab of
IT Component fact sheets.
• We defined the business criticality of Applications based on input of the managing directors of the companies that use them
The list will grow…
Service Desk

06 Outlook on 2019: governance

Relevant governance processes
• Projects change or add applications to the landscape. When a project is in a stage where it is reasonably certain it will execute
and change the application landscape, we add the application to LeanIX. The process is not well defined enough yet that we get
timely input for the lifecycle definition from the project (2019…)
• Non-standard application requests add applications to the landscape. As soon as we get a request, we add the application to
LeanIX. The process is not well enough defined yet that we can be certain we hear about it if someone rejects the request
(2019…)
• Service Management is in implementation right now, we will have to look at how to integrate with LeanIX in 2019

Thank you very much for
your attention

Lessons learned: A step-wise implementation for Application Rationalization

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