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JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
Implementation strikes success at Gravograph-New Hermes Holding LLC
Company Overview
 New Hermes was born in 1938 with the invention of
the first portable engraving machine. During World
War II New Hermes not only stayed in business, but
flourished with such contracts as equipping every US
battle ship with a New Hermes engraving machine for
instruction panels and shipboard signage and
engraving 3.5 million ID tags for all the school
children in New York City in the event there was an
attack. In 1954 the firm partnered with Gravograph
in Troyes, France and began manufacturing and
distributing what has become the worldwide leader in
engraving machines. The global headquarters for
Gravograph New Hermes Holding LLC is located in
Duluth, Georgia. At this location Gravograph–New
Hermes has grown it’s global operations to now being
in excess of 40% of the entire market for
specialized printing, printing machines and printing
supplies.
From their Duluth headquarters the company
distributes its engraving machines through a network
of 11 wholly owned subsidiaries and a worldwide
agent network. Even with this state of the art
technology, engraving machine sales only account for
approximately 50% of total sales. Remaining sales
stem from the sale of engraving materials and
fabrication services. The sale of these consumables,
as well as the expertise of custom orders, has
contributed to the ongoing growth of this exciting
firm. In 2000, the prominent investment firm Castle
Harlan purchased Gravograph–New Hermes. Castle
Harlan is known for seeking out those companies that
have proprietary products or services and enjoys a
dominant competitive position in the market place.
Challenges Faced
 Gravograph purchased
JD Edwards EnterpriseOne in
2001 in France with enough licenses to cover the
U.S. operations and had contracted with IBM to host
all these systems. In June of 2003, the
implementation in France was still not completed. Ed
Cordell, CFO, had the task of getting the U.S.
operation up on JD Edwards. The current system in
the U.S. was an old homegrown legacy system without
proper audit trails or controls. Challenges
associated with implementing EnterpriseOne in the
U.S. included:
- Implementing in the U.S. when many setup
routes had already been chosen
- Implementing in the U.S. when the Accounts
and Item descriptions were in French
- Working locally when EnterpriseOne was
hosted by IBM in France
- Establishing Fat Clients in the U.S. for
programming customizations while maintaining
acceptable response times in Troye, France
- Investing dollars carefully in this
implementation effort
- Working with limited resource capacity in
the U.S.
The Solution
 Gravograph–New Hermes partnered with
CD Group,
Inc. to implement the Financial, Distribution,
Planning and Service and Warranty modules of
JD Edwards EnterpriseOne at the Duluth location. The goal was
to be integrated with France, and also to create a
model that would work in all of the subsidiary
locations.
Gravograph defined an implementation strategy
that included team leaders for each of the major
processes. Several large modifications became
necessary for the U.S. operation for localization
purposes, including a Fabrication module, a Credit
Card authorization and settlement interface with
freight estimated at order entry, a UPS shipping
interface, as well as interfaces with the Vertex tax
reporting package and the Streamserve Forms package.
The implementation had its share of setbacks,
including IBM hosting issues, resource availability
and programming challenges. Through it all,
Gravograph and CD Group persevered and went live in
June of 2004 and declared the project a success in
October of 2004.
“CD Group always responded to the challenges by
saying ‘let’s figure out how to solve this.’ They
stuck with us.”
Ed Cordell,
CFO
Benefits Realized
By persevering through a challenging
implementation, Gravograph is now enjoying the
benefits of a system integrated with the production
facility in France and integrated within its own
operations. These benefits include:
- Ability to produce product line
profitability reporting for machines,
fabrication and services
- Ability to track efficiency of service
contracts
- Ability to track number of warranty and
service calls
- Increased inventory accuracy
- 50% reduction of time for monthly close
- Ability to send automated e-mail with UPS
tracking information to customers when product
ships
- 5% reduction of customer service staff
- 5% reduction of inventory and expecting to
reduce it by an additional 15%
- Reduction of errors via integration of
Accounts Payable to Purchasing, and Sales to
Accounts Receivable
Through its partnership with CD Group and the
dedication of the entire project team, Gravograph
has achieved financial benefits and defined a model
for all of the Gravograph entities to follow in
their subsequent implementations.
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