Optiva accelerates commercialization at Johnson Wax

Software Magazine, Spring, 2002 by Elizabeth U. Harding

"For us, commercialization is king," says Bob Israel, director of professional and regulatory affairs, Johnson Wax Professional (JWP), Sturtevant, Wisc. Helping JWP accelerate commercialization is the Optiva product development application suite from Formation Systems, Southborough, Mass., which automates product formulation. "It gives us the ability to get products out to the marketplace--everybody wants to do that faster and faster," says Israel.

JWP separated from S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. about two years ago. The new company markets to the institutional rather than the consumer market. With 2,500 employees serving customers in more than 50 countries, JWP today is a leading global manufacturer of hygiene and appearance products for every type of sanitation, cleaning, and maintenance task.

Inherited Legacy

Although it was an independent company, JWP found itself still dependent on S.C. Johnson & Son because of an inherited legacy system, which it had to lease.

"Our business was being dictated by what the system let us do," says Israel. "It became clear that we needed a new system that let us have control over our own destiny."

Driven by JWP's R&D, with IT support, the project started off with software evaluation. Israel says he wanted a system that was not overly cumbersome and was easy to manipulate by users. Israel did not want to be dependent on IT to write programs. Says Israel, "Optiva offered us the best platform in terms of keeping a formulary database and a raw material database, and yet incorporated things like specifications for regulatory compliance, for instance. It allows us to house all of this with our process for getting products approved and placed on the market."

The project of migrating to Optiva is still in its early stages. Israel says he is looking at a six-month implementation. The biggest challenge, Israel says, is making sure of the integrity of JWP's data. "This is outside the Optiva platform. We want to make sure when we migrate the data that we clean it up if needed."

Besides implementing Optiva, JWP is also migrating to ERP applications from J.D. Edwards, Denver. According to Israel, the new systems will save JWP money.

"Since we were leasing the legacy system from S.C. Johnson, we couldn't make any modifications to it without going through prioritization hoops and hurdles," says Israel. "We save money not having to lease the system, plus we gain the benefit of having a system that works the way we do business."