Logicalis

American Foods Group needed a centralized system in a very short timeframe and Logicalis put together a proposal to make-over their applications.

---

Fulfilling customers' needs is the name of the game at American Foods Group. The simple act of listening to the customer has turned this company into one of the preferred providers of fresh and frozen meats to some of the largest retailers and national food distributors. Headquartered in Green Bay, WI, their primary business is the harvest and fabrication of cattle into boxed beef and the sales and marketing of value added beef and brand products. Established in 1985 by current co-CEO Carl W. Kuehne, American Foods Group has experienced success by being customer-focused, performance-driven and relationship-oriented. Targeted partnerships and the desire to meet the customer's expectations 100% of the time have been the key to their continued success and growth.

In July of 2005, American Foods Group and Rosen's Diversified, Inc. of Fairmont, MN merged creating a new national food company known as American Foods Group, LLC. The new expanded company has operations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Ohio, Nebraska and Virginia. The merger provided new opportunities and areas of growth for the company and their more than 3,000 associates.

Merging companies creates challenges - especially when it comes to integrating information systems. The new company found itself with a mixture of technology applications and interfaces. Rosen was running a decentralized organization with a separate Windows® solution at all four of their fresh meat plants. To get the desired business results, it was necessary to get everyone on a centralized system in a very short timeframe. The main challenge was to agree on how to centralize and what system to use. "American Foods had the solutions that the company wanted to run," stated Lou Ann Bannow, VP of IT. "But it was character-based (green screen), and the Rosen group was used to Windows-based screens and required that type of interface." With a very aggressive timeframe in place they started looking at options that could get the company from five separate business systems to one centralized system with a graphical user interface.

American Foods began by looking at two options - having the software vendor of the Windows applications create a centralized solution or taking the current green screen application from software vendor SSA and upgrading it to a new Windows-based release with a graphical user interface. "As we looked into these options we found that neither were going to work out," stated Bannow. Centralizing the data on the Windows applications was not working. Next they looked at upgrading the SSA software and found that the customizations they had made over the past seven years would make it impossible to accomplish in the given timeframe. Plus the upgrade from SSA was new and not in production yet.

Logicalis has been a preferred technology partner of American Foods Group for many years. During a regular meeting they shared their current needs with Logicalis looking for suggestions. "I introduced the idea of using transformation software to front end their SSA application to give them the desired look and feel they wanted," stated Tony Fischer, Logicalis Account Manager. Changing the existing screens to Windows would allow them to keep their modifications to the software, provide a quicker implementation time, and add access to the application from the Internet. This idea took hold and American Foods Group started to pursue this option.

After carefully considering the complex needs of this project, Logicalis put together a proposal that recommended the IBM Host Access Transformation Server (HATS) to make-over their application. "Our team met to discuss the client's needs and timeframe to ensure that the right solution was presented," stated Bob Verheyen, Logicalis Director of Consulting. "We did not want to make any assumptions regarding what they needed." The HATS software makes 3270 and 5250 applications available as HTML through web browsers, while converting host screens to a web look and feel. HATS is a rule-based transformation engine that is a zero-footprint, zero-download Web-to-host solution. The power of HATS lies in its ability to accurately recognize the components of host screens and transform them in real time to a web interface according to a set of predefined rules. HATS has macro support that allows you to provide programmed navigation through multiple legacy screens to improve the productivity and ease of use of host applications. HATS enables programmed access to a single host application, or can integrate screens from multiple host applications into a single Web interface.

Logicalis' project team created a proof-of-concept on five order entry screens so American Foods could make sure the solution would give them the desired end results. "We initially considered two partners to do this work. We chose Logicalis based on our relationship and also because they were responsive and provided thought leadership. Logicalis reacted much quicker than the other partner and had the proof-of-concept created for the project before the other partner could even put a proposal together," said Bannow.

Once approved, Logicalis got to work ASAP on the project. As work progressed, additional needs became apparent – such as the need for single sign-on, due to the number of applications that were running in the environment. Logicalis presented the concept of portal to American Foods. Because the HATS solution was built on the IBM WebSphere Portal framework, it was easy to address the single sign-on issue by using portals and portlets to display access to all applications from any browser. Additional functionality was added to the portal by creating a customized sales bulletin board portlet for the sales department which would allow the different facilities to stay informed on pricing changes and other market information. This presented consistency to the customer – regardless of which location they were working with.

With a goal of having the solution fully integrated across all divisions of the company, American Foods looks forward to the associated benefits it would bring. "The key thing is centralizing the systems to make our business more efficient," stated Bannow. "Our sales team will be more competitive by having access to the inventory at all the plants through one system. We will reduce the amount of accounts receivable work and our customer service should be second-to-none." Logicalis looks forward to working together with American Foods to transform their business applications and help them create a competitive advantage in the food distribution market.