Fusion Labs Application Management and IT Outsourcing Solution Reduces Expenses and Creates Economies of Scale for an International Shipping Corporation

With over 5,100 employees worldwide, this Fusion Labs client is one of the world’s top ten (10) international freight forwarders and the largest Far East to US airfreight provider. Key business activities include: warehousing, distribution, trucking, and ocean going containerized shipping functions out of 300 offices connected by a worldwide communications network that includes 125 cities in 32 countries.

The Challenge

This $20Billion+ global shipping firm faced a common information technology challenge: as its customer service and operational demands increased, the need grew rapidly for its IT services to continually improve application functionality, reduce time-to-market for ongoing adjustments and deliver better cost efficiency. The client operated two United States-based data centers and four others worldwide. Its technical staff was responsible for the development of strategic custom applications designed to support a specialized worldwide logistics business serving electronic trading communities. These custom systems handle the processing of complex customs, tariffs, security, taxes, etc. They are also based on localized laws and each countries unique business rules as well as supporting uniform real-time shipment control, scheduling, and tracking.

Client investment in the development and implementation of its integrated worldwide IT systems exceeds $250 Million and many consider the applications key to the company’s competitive edge. Operating and maintaining an evolving multinational network supporting a suite of proprietary business applications had become a costly 24X7 task and left few IT personnel and minimal capital available for long-term improvements. In order to protect their competitive edge and to create economies of scale, it became critical for the company to reduce IT expenses, free up internal technical staff to drive more strategic actions and simplify their technical operations.

Solution

Fusion Labs conducted a thorough front-end analysis and process documentation, including an assessment of the business functions and application environment. Fusion Labs became expert with the client’s systems and proposed a set of detailed recommendations for effectively managing and operating the client applications worldwide, via a secure network, to be provided as a turnkey outsourced service. The Fusion Labs solution delivers increased scalability, security, and application management superior to the existing environment.

Once the client approved the proposal, Fusion Labs replicated the client’s application infrastructure and migrated all applications to its Application Lab in Dallas. Following this step, Fusion Labs initiated 24X7 support functions including: full network management, help desk support, provisioning and protecting the worldwide infrastructure, managing storage needs, providing continual database tuning and guaranteed business application reliability and systems performance levels.

End Result

Fusion Labs has now significantly simplified client operations and reduced costs by consolidating applications management into a single operations facility. Improved service quality and efficiency has been realized for both the outsourced application support activities and the strategic business functions. Fusion Labs has thus helped the company to manage growth while optimizing IT staff productivity, resolving fast-breaking performance issues and increasing customer satisfaction. The client has also been able to quickly simplify the adoption of new technologies, minimize IT hiring and training obligations, and compress time-to-market for new value adding projects and initiatives.