Client:
LaSalle Solutions is a premier solution provider that offers an array of technology asset life-cycle management tools and services for Fortune 500 companies in the Consumer, Pharmaceutical, Financial and Healthcare industries. It provides lease financing, asset and contract maintenance, tracking and equipment disposal that optimizes an organization’s equipment, promotes efficiency, increases productivity and reduces costs.
Challenge:
Organizations that manage their technology assets effectively are in the best position to run more efficiently, meet compliance regulations and cut costs. While most large organizations have finance and accounting systems in place to record asset information, these systems do not have the capability to integrate data from multiple sources such as vendors, partners or internal applications to accurately track technology assets across the enterprise. This deficiency leads to inconsistent information, duplicate spending, pointless maintenance fees, non-compliant disposal, lost or stolen inventory and unnecessary lease buyouts.
In a continuous effort to assist its clients in improving business processes and alleviating the burdens associated with asset management, LaSalle Solutions recognized the need for a centralized, Web-based management tool that would enable organizations to integrate information from across disparate sources, allowing for optimal management and cost savings.
While LaSalle Solution's current platform (LAMP) helped maintain its clients’ assets, there was an obvious opportunity to enhance the application by creating a simple way to share information across an enterprise. This capability would allow organizations to consolidate information about all assets and equipment from all sources and in varying formats and systems into one centralized location.
Within LaSalle Solutions, this application would need to integrate data from multiple customers with multiple products and allow a back-end business flow that would not corrupt LaSalle Solutions’ current systems and process.
Solution:
In order to implement this type of application, LaSalle Solutions knew it needed to partner with a true expert in the Microsoft® application arena. MPS Partners had helped LaSalle Solutions develop the current highly-regarded asset management system (LAMP); making them a strong contender for the new project, but it was MPS Partners’ proficiency and capabilities with Microsoft applications and its status as a premier Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that compelled LaSalle Solutions to choose MPS Partners as its provider of choice. "Choosing MPS Partners was an easy decision they have an incredible depth of talent and skill set within Microsoft applications, and are up front about what they can deliver", said Steven Robb, vice president and general manager of LaSalle Solutions.
Working closely with LaSalle Solution's IT team, MPS Partners utilized its technological expertise and four-phase approach: Assessment, Business Scenario, Architecture Design and Proof of Concept (POC) to help create a strategy and framework to develop and implement this new application.
Using a phased process enabled MPS Partners to fully understand LaSalle Solutions’ unique requirements, identify the technology tool set it must work with and define a creative technological solution that added both value and lowered cost. "MPS Partners is exceptional with the ‘whiteboard’ stuff", stated Robb. "They know how to identify all the pieces, map it together and create a solid business plan."
- Initially, MPS Partners did a full review of LaSalle Solutions’ needs. While familiar with its technology and current applications, MPS Partners also completed a needs assessment of the potential applications that partners and clients could use to provide data into LaSalle Solutions’ updated asset management application.
- MPS Partners then moved on to the second phase, reviewing the specific details surrounding the core integration business scenario, focusing on workflow, business process definition, business logic, business process modeling and deployment.
Through these first two phases, MPS Partners saw the opportunity to utilize Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006 R2. This application would meet LaSalle Solutions’ need to automate, integrate and manage business processes by exchanging business data (documents, invoices, purchase orders, contracts, etc.) between unrelated applications across organizational boundaries. Utilizing BizTalk would also allow LaSalle Solutions to continue to extend its core process management technologies even further while ensuring the integrity of the current system.
Once BizTalk was approved, MPS Partners began the final stages of development and deployment.
- MPS Partners built an integration plan that included business and application logic, technology integration, security, user access and control.
- Working alongside LaSalle Solutions’ IT team, MPS Partners built and deployed the BizTalk platform that now provides a secure Internet hub for LaSalle Solutions' clients to integrate their information and sources.
"MPS Partners consistently listened to our needs and understood the business process issues we needed to solve then applied their technological expertise", stated Robb.
Results:
Through BizTalk, MPS Partners created a seamless backend solution that enables LaSalle Solutions’ clients to easily federate, process and manage their data, providing a more efficient application for better asset management and cost savings. The solution includes:
- A Web-based hub allowing 24/7 access from anywhere
- Better information flow
- A flexible uploading tool that can receive data in convenient formats (i.e. Excel, csv, xml)
- Customized and scheduled reporting
- A back-end business flow control that would not corrupt the current systems
This enhancement to its current suite of offerings has positioned LaSalle Solutions as a true differentiator in the marketplace.
LaSalle Solutions’ asset management tools powered by Microsoft applications have proven extremely successful. LaSalle Solutions currently has over 200,000 assets under management and processes approximately 25,000 transactions per year through LAMP. By utilizing LAMP, customers enjoy, on average, a nearly 30 percent savings on initial maintenance fees during a project roll out and an additional 39 percent savings on ongoing maintenance fees through credits or removals.
"MPS Partners has been instrumental in helping LaSalle Solutions create the tools and applications that have elevated us from being a commodity broker to a valued service provider with highly structured and integrated solutions. From the very beginning, MPS Partners has been committed to ensuring LaSalle Solutions’ success. In fact, since LAMP’s inception more than four years ago, LaSalle Solutions has seen a growth in revenue of over 500 percent," concluded Robb.