CASESTUDY
Newell Rubbermaid
The business
A seven billion dollar, Fortune 500 company, Newell Rubbermaid is a global manufacturer and full-service marketer of branded consumer products. It is the company behind household names including Pyrex, Papermate, Graco and Little Tikes. The company currently operates under four business groups: Rubbermaid, Sharpie, Irwin and Calphalon and employs almost 50,000 people worldwide.
Totalamber has been working with Newell Rubbermaid for around three years across a number of pan-continental projects and implementations in both Europe and Australia. Projects have included work on applications including Movex, Cyborg and Business Intelligence.
The challenge
When Newell Rubbermaid first began using totalamber in 2000, it had already tried a number of professional service providers – and with varying degrees of success according to Bob Kaus, the company’s director of business implementations in Europe. That meant the company needed to bring in consultants who were nothing less than expert when it came to their knowledge of the software – something which was more easily said than achieved, and that soon became a major concern, explains Kaus.
“When we first used Totalamber we were going through various issues with some of our financial information management systems. It was a question of locating high-quality consulting expertise to help us with the roll-out, programming and project management requirements.”
As is often the case in such circumstances, the company was forced to keep looking around; trawling the marketplace, exploring different avenues and trialing various options, until it could find the right resource.
Newell Rubbermaid decided to implement a standardised HR data base system across Europe. Involving the integration of a large amount of ‘non-standardised data’ contained in Newell Rubbermaid’s various HR and Payroll systems around Europe, the task was nothing short of enormous. In fact, it encompassed approximately 50 different systems spread right across the company’s European operation and duly became a protracted and painstaking process.
“Having successfully rolled out a pilot project we decided to go ahead with a full enterprise install. However, it was taking as much as 4 months to roll out in just one country”, says Patrick Lescart.
“It was too slow, with too many locations and too many databases. And with so many countries needing the update 33 in fact – the 4 month lead time was unacceptable and we had to do something to cut down the timescales.”
The solution
As they had worked with Newell on several previous projects, the UK-based professional IT services provider was a natural choice. The company brought in two Totalamber consultants to work with the one man internal resource on the roll-out project in Europe.
Travelling across the length and breadth of Europe, each consultant would spend 5 to 6 days at each site over a period of 3 weeks pulling together the necessary information and using a pre-prepared template to mould the data into the appropriate format.
With one consultant spending most of his time in the back office, whilst the other was based predominantly on site, both were involved closely at every stage of the process, from data analysis and specification right through to roll-out itself.
Client value
“It was an arrangement”, says Lescart, “that worked perfectly”.
“The fit was excellent from the very beginning, with both the consultants clearly demonstrating a high level of expertise on the Cyborg platform. In fact, even a Cyborg guru who was originally working for the vendor itself was impressed by their knowledge and ability.”
“There was a wonderful professional synergy between the two. They had obviously worked with each other in the past, knew and appreciated each other’s working patterns and communicated accordingly. That made the relationship a dream to work with.”
The team was often on site from early in the morning until late at night, making Newell feel they were truly committed to the task and striking “a balance between price and efficiency which was totally fair”.
“As such”, says Lescart, “the whole project was completed in a great spirit, with a genuine sense of achievement”.
“I am not usually what you might call ‘a friend’ of technology and I’m pretty cynical about it, but I was totally impressed. The pace of the rollout was excellent and with the exception of one country (where the delay was caused by factors totally beyond our control) we completed the whole of Europe – all 33 countries – in just 6 months.”
“Totalamber were always fast, efficient and clear in their invoicing, so we always knew exactly where we stood. That in turn gave us total transparency and control over our expenditure – so the whole process was crystal clear.”
The level of attention Newell received from an account management point of view was also something that impressed Lescart. “Our account manager kept in touch throughout; making sure that we were happy; calling to see how the roll-out was progressing, and making certain that everything was OK. The service was professional and superb at every stage and every base was covered. Teamwork like that is quite simply a pleasure to work with.”
A seven billion dollar, Fortune 500 company, Newell Rubbermaid is a global manufacturer and full-service marketer of branded consumer products. It is the company behind household names including Pyrex, Papermate, Graco and Little Tikes. The company currently operates under four business groups: Rubbermaid, Sharpie, Irwin and Calphalon and employs almost 50,000 people worldwide.Totalamber has been working with Newell Rubbermaid for around three years across a number of pan-continental projects and implementations in both Europe and Australia. Projects have included work on applications including Movex, Cyborg and Business Intelligence.
The challenge
When Newell Rubbermaid first began using totalamber in 2000, it had already tried a number of professional service providers – and with varying degrees of success according to Bob Kaus, the company’s director of business implementations in Europe. That meant the company needed to bring in consultants who were nothing less than expert when it came to their knowledge of the software – something which was more easily said than achieved, and that soon became a major concern, explains Kaus.
“When we first used Totalamber we were going through various issues with some of our financial information management systems. It was a question of locating high-quality consulting expertise to help us with the roll-out, programming and project management requirements.”
As is often the case in such circumstances, the company was forced to keep looking around; trawling the marketplace, exploring different avenues and trialing various options, until it could find the right resource.
Newell Rubbermaid decided to implement a standardised HR data base system across Europe. Involving the integration of a large amount of ‘non-standardised data’ contained in Newell Rubbermaid’s various HR and Payroll systems around Europe, the task was nothing short of enormous. In fact, it encompassed approximately 50 different systems spread right across the company’s European operation and duly became a protracted and painstaking process.
“Having successfully rolled out a pilot project we decided to go ahead with a full enterprise install. However, it was taking as much as 4 months to roll out in just one country”, says Patrick Lescart.
“It was too slow, with too many locations and too many databases. And with so many countries needing the update 33 in fact – the 4 month lead time was unacceptable and we had to do something to cut down the timescales.”
The solution
As they had worked with Newell on several previous projects, the UK-based professional IT services provider was a natural choice. The company brought in two Totalamber consultants to work with the one man internal resource on the roll-out project in Europe.
Travelling across the length and breadth of Europe, each consultant would spend 5 to 6 days at each site over a period of 3 weeks pulling together the necessary information and using a pre-prepared template to mould the data into the appropriate format.
With one consultant spending most of his time in the back office, whilst the other was based predominantly on site, both were involved closely at every stage of the process, from data analysis and specification right through to roll-out itself.
Client value
“It was an arrangement”, says Lescart, “that worked perfectly”.
“The fit was excellent from the very beginning, with both the consultants clearly demonstrating a high level of expertise on the Cyborg platform. In fact, even a Cyborg guru who was originally working for the vendor itself was impressed by their knowledge and ability.”
“There was a wonderful professional synergy between the two. They had obviously worked with each other in the past, knew and appreciated each other’s working patterns and communicated accordingly. That made the relationship a dream to work with.”
The team was often on site from early in the morning until late at night, making Newell feel they were truly committed to the task and striking “a balance between price and efficiency which was totally fair”.
“As such”, says Lescart, “the whole project was completed in a great spirit, with a genuine sense of achievement”.
“I am not usually what you might call ‘a friend’ of technology and I’m pretty cynical about it, but I was totally impressed. The pace of the rollout was excellent and with the exception of one country (where the delay was caused by factors totally beyond our control) we completed the whole of Europe – all 33 countries – in just 6 months.”
“Totalamber were always fast, efficient and clear in their invoicing, so we always knew exactly where we stood. That in turn gave us total transparency and control over our expenditure – so the whole process was crystal clear.”
The level of attention Newell received from an account management point of view was also something that impressed Lescart. “Our account manager kept in touch throughout; making sure that we were happy; calling to see how the roll-out was progressing, and making certain that everything was OK. The service was professional and superb at every stage and every base was covered. Teamwork like that is quite simply a pleasure to work with.”
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