Microsoft Chemical Team Blog

SAT Corporation has released a nice 15-minute on-demand webinar which provides their point-of-view of how the Oil & Gas and chemical industry can use technology to provide role-based productivity to your mobile maintenance workforce.  They provide a nice overview of the business case for change, and highlight one of their customer success stories with Valero.  Charlie Mohrmann does a really nice job with the webinar.

SAT Corp uses the Microsoft platform - from mobile device development through to the back-end and development platform - to deliver its solution.  If you have 15 minutes...it's worth a look.

I was reading a colleague's blog the other day who was excited to be home after a bunch of travel so that he could get back to blogging.  I find it the opposite - I tend to blog more when I travel than I do when I am home.  As you can tell, I have been home over the last week or so.

Anyway, for those of you attending the upcoming PDMA & IIR Annual Front End of Innovation Conference in Boston next week, come see what we are up to.  There is good chemical representation on the board (Ashland) and speaking (Dow Chemical and Dow Corning), and I suspect many of the chemical companies will be in attendance.  Our GM of Innovation will be speaking on the topic of new ideas for ideation, and we will have a booth hosted by our innovation process management solution leads.  You can get a glimpse of our innovation process management scenario here, but if you are at the conference, you will see some new things we are working on added to the scenario.

Our Innovation Process Management solution is built to allow you to take your structure innovation process and support it with technology through the lifecycle.  The solution is built on top of Office SharePoint Server 2007, and uses our Office Project Portfolio Server and Enterprise Project Management solutions as ideas become funded initiatives and into actual projects.

We just released this case study about ChemSynergy Asia, a distributor of oleochemicals in the Phillipines.  They were rolling up financial and inventory information with its headquarters in Germany by using spreadsheets and other manual mechanisms.  They rolled out Dynamics NAV in 4 weeks using the Microsoft Dynamics SureStep methodology, and reduced reporting time by 89% as well as cut utility and manpower costs by 9%.  Take a look when you get the chance.  It is another great example of a hub and spoke architecture for Dynamics as well as a great example of using the right solution for the right challenge

As a follow up to my earlier blog about xobni.com...today they opened the beta to everyone.  You no longer need an invitation.

It was a great few days at the ChemITC spring meeting on Cyber Security.  Not the least of which was enjoying cuban food and great company on Thursday night in South Beach.  Thanks again to Dow Corning for jointly presenting their journey with us.  It was a great presentation.

A funny thing happened on Thursday.  We all received voice mails from the hotel that we would be in virtual lock-down in the hotel in the evening because of the Mercedes-Benz Miami corporate run.  We made it out in time, and avoided the blocked roads and 20,000+ runners.  Check out the story...they have a good gallery of pictures.

I am currently sitting in a hotel in Orlando getting ready for a ChemWeek CIO roundtable tonight.  There are a number of good topics and some really good participants.  It should be a good evening.

I admit it, I have a little bit of a software crush going on right now.  A colleague forwarded me an invitation to join the Xobni beta.  I am an analytics geek at heart, and it drives me nuts not to be able to do analytics on my email.  I installed Xobni - it installs as an add-in for Outlook - and have been using it for an hour.  They have a bunch of killer features...a couple of things stood out...

• The Xobni analytics functionality shows me how much email, from who, send/receive patterns, etc...including showing me who is not responding to emails...I have one from 192 days ago...I think that thread is dead, but in this case it actually was a missed opportunity to make a good connection with someone
• Has a "schedule time with" feature...offers up some available times to a colleague...sweet
• Shows all the attachments you have send/received in emails with that contact

Go check it out...I think it is an invitation-only beta going on, but there are ways you can move to the front of the line (tip the bouncer?)...

Alright, back to the chemical business...

It was a busy first day at the ChemITC Spring Cyber Security meeting down in Miami, Florida.  While we have participated in activities over the past year, this is the first conference where we are actual affiliate members.  It was good to catch up with everyone and meet some new folks.  We have a few of our partners who are also affiliate members in attendance.  I enjoyed the conversations with Open Text, Liquid Machines, and AspenTech.

Our Friday presentation with Dow Corning on protecting intellectual property using Active Directory Right Management Services should be spot on based on the roundtable of top challenges I heard today.  I am glad we will be speaking on a topic so relevant to the group.

Tomorrow should be a great day as we will get into the working group sessions.

Cheers!

We just released a case study with OSISoft highlighting the growing trend of usage for OSISoft's PI system and corresponding real-time performance management infrastructure for environmental improvements including energy and emissions.  Most of us know them for their market presence in helping process industry company operations, but they are starting to be implemented more and more in this area as well.  From data centers to measuring the energy performance of manufacturers, the case study is an interesting read.

OSISoft is a great partner of ours.  They do a nice job of leveraging the Microsoft stack in their solutions...I pulled a quote from founder and CEO, Patrick Kennedy to this point...

“It’s their information,” says Kennedy. “But to put it to work, it has to get to people with sufficient accuracy, timeliness, and fidelity to be of use and to be understandable by the typical worker. That is why we believe strongly in the Office platform. All plant personnel can use a Microsoft® Office Excel® spreadsheet or go to a Microsoft Office SharePoint® site for their information. Our job is to deliver it fast and to let them know it is there.”

This is a perfect example of the convergence we are driving of the horizontal IS capabilities like personal productivity, collaboration, unified communications, and business intelligence into the functional applications run by manufacturing, engineering, R&D, finance, supply chain and sales and marketing.

Nice story...take a look.

What a great day today.  I'd like to thank all of the customers who took the afternoon off to join us for the game.  Also, a big thank you to Bill Polk from AMR for giving an update on the chemical industry outlook and trends.

I landed in Philadelphia this evening to sunny skies.  I am here hosting an event tomorrow at the Phillies game.  It is supposed to be 70 degrees and sunny for the game.  There is always a risk when you schedule an event at a baseball game in mid-April, but it should work out well.

Of course, I forgot to bring my camera on the trip, so I won't be able to take any photos of the event or of the stadium to share.  Too bad...

I had some great meetings in Michigan - thanks to those folks in case you are checking out my blog.

It's a busy week this week.  After a bit of travel last week, I am out and about again this week (Michigan and Philly).  I want to point out a case study we released back in February with BASF IT Service around application virtualization.  I held off blogging about it, mainly because there was nothing particularly chemical industry-specific written in this case study.  At the Microsoft Manufacturing Users Group (MS MUG) earlier this month, however, BASF talked publicly about the work they did with one of our industry partners and virtualization.  The case study is going through the final sign-offs before posting, but I plan to blog again about the chemical-industry specific work they did and benefits.  It is a terrific story.  So check out this case study to get a feel for application virtualization, in general, and I will come back and hit this topic again...hopefully within a month.

ChemWeek reported today that Judith Gross of IFF was named to Global Director, Fragrance Innovation.  The press release mentions a couple of interesting things.  For one, she will have a dedicated team focused on new alliances and partnerships, and secondly the press release notes how innovation is becoming increasingly important in their marketplace.

Slowly, but surely you see the trend of more and more titles containing Innovation.  It is a trend that spans industries, and it is definitely happening in the chemical industry.

So what?  Who cares?

It is more proof of the industry returning its focus to innovation as a source of growth.

But, is your information technology ready to support it?

Innovation takes on many definitions.  For some it means R&D breakthroughs.  For others, it means process or service breakthroughs, or even applying existing technology to solve different problems.

Whatever your approach, information technology plays an increasingly important role in your success.

Today's teams are spread out globally, and chemical companies continue to create partnerships and alliances to jointly develop intellectual property.

Getting work done effectively in this environment requires more sophisticated tools.  Tools that allow you to communicate and collaborate with other people on information.  Tools that help you build corporate knowledge, and tools that help you manage the process.  And these tools must do so while preserving the high standards of compliance and security as you make them available around the world and outside the organization to trusted partners.

I have blogged previously about some of the case studies we have in this area.  The key to success is having the right IT infrastructure in place to enable secure collaboration, and then providing the tools in a thoughtful way that enable and foster the level of collaboration and process management needed to thrive in this environment.