BLUEPRINT: HUNTING ENERGY SERVICES

THE EFFICIENCY EQUATION
The Building Partner
Hunting Energy furnishes tubular products and services to oil and gas operators around the world. Hunting is the largest supplier of 13-chrome tubulars in the North Sea and Canada as well as accessory products on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Hunting Energy is part of Hunting PLC, a large international energy services conglomerate based in the U.K.

+ Surveying the Project
Hunting Energy Services was faced with challenges of reducing administrative costs in a highly volatile energy market. The company sought to replace SAP with a more economical solution, but still needed to retain key functionality and be positioned to scale into other markets as the energy climate changes. The solution also needed to be deployed in 90 days.

+ Drafting the Blueprint
Hunting selected The Rand Group (TRG) to replace SAP. TRG formulated a plan to implement a solution based on Microsoft Great Plains, integrated with other Microsoft technologies, to meet the requirements of the finance, distribution and fabrication business functions. Hunting required specific functionality for the tubulars industry including: ease of supply chain integration with larger trading partners, dual unit of measure capability throughout the product layer, seamless integration with Microsoft Office for integration with smaller partners, and workflow extensibility. All of this functionality had to be delivered at a lower cost than SAP with the ability to scale and adapt as the business environment changed.

+The Microsoft Building Blocks
The breadth of the Microsoft product stack provided the foundation necessary to achieve Hunting's goals. Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains running on SQL Server formed the core of the system. The addition of BizTalk Server allowed quick integration of different trading partners in the supply chain. Great Plains' integration with Microsoft Office enabled seamless sharing of data not only within Hunting, but also with smaller customers and vendors desiring information in Excel and document delivery via email.

+ The Rand Group Expertise
The Rand Group team, consisting of CPAs and Microsoft certified developers with energy and distribution experience, replaced SAP in a rapid 45 day deployment while maintaining functionality specific to the tubulars business. Leveraging Microsoft BizTalk server and workflow tools, TRG replaced EDI with an XML capable integration architecture allowing more rapid integration of new trading partners in the supply chain.

= Measurable Results
This approach, coupled with the open architecture of Microsoft Great Plains, allows Hunting the ability to easily share information with both suppliers and customers with reduced cost and time to deployment. Hunting's total cost to implement the Great Plains system was less than the annual maintenance cost of SAP, and the solution was deployed in half the time of the 90-day goal.