Automobile seat and interior manufacturer TS TECH  began business in 1960 producing motorcycle seats. Since that time it has grown to be a major global supplier with operations in 57 locations in 11 countries. The company’s growth is driven by the pursuit of product safety, user comfort and environmentally friendly technologies, together with robust technology that sustains efficient production and administration operations.

As a supplier to automotive giant, Honda, TS TECH UK Ltd uses IBM Lotus technology as its email platform to match the parent company. With Lotus Domino 6.54 reaching the end of its supported life the decision was taken to migrate the company’s platform to Lotus Domino 8.5.  In addition to the approaching obsolescence of version 6.54, TS TECH UK had to upgrade as TS Tech Japan is listed on the Japanese Stock Exchange and must comply with J-Sox, the Japanese Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. 

As Production Support Department Manager, Andy Williams has responsibility for all TS TECH’s IT systems – those governing the manufacture and production of the company’s products as well as administrative functions – Quality Control and the Technical Control Centre. He explains that his team’s focus is “to support the production of our products, and ensure we get the results demanded of the company.” Lotus Notes, while important for the company to communicate and collaborate with the parent, represents around five percent of the company’s technical estate. The remainder governs production and manufacturing processes and other back-office operations. 95% of the company’s technical requirements are met in-house, with only the Lotus Notes operation being handled externally. This made it important to Andy Williams that the right partner was engaged to help with the upgrade. After reviewing a number of suppliers Applicable Ltd was selected by TS TECH to provide the expertise and resources to manage the upgrade. As Andy explains, “Applicable gave us confidence in their ability from the start. They invested some of their time to understand our situation. They didn’t over-sell, they simply took time to understand where we were, where we needed to be and developed a plan to help us get there.” Applicable’s approach was a refreshing one for Andy, “Applicable’s up front assessment helped establish a relationship before the contract was even awarded. They showed commitment and we benefited from transparency and trust from an early stage.”

With the need for collaboration with the Japanese head office driving the technology choice, two new servers were required. Applicable also recommended isolating some applications on dedicated servers in a cluster. This provides back-up and resilience if one server goes down. It also helps improve performance as previously mailboxes, file storage and printers ran from the same servers.

One of the elements which impressed Andy Williams was the level of knowledge that the Applicable consultant carried around with him. “There was nothing he had to go away and find out. That gave us enormous confidence and reassurance in our own abilities too, as he reinforced our knowledge. Working with people who really know what they are doing and understand what we want to achieve makes life much easier.”

The depth of trust in the relationship has lead to TS TECH inviting Applicable to provide a systems health-check on the company’s other servers and network. Andy says, “You get the impression that some ‘health-check’ offers are a bit of a Trojan horse, but we are confident that Applicable will do this competently and fairly with our best interests at heart, after all, they have proven themselves via the Lotus project.”

With the new servers installed and the Lotus Domino environment up and running, without impacting on the performance of the users, TS TECH has embraced the new functionality of the technology. Policy-based administration serves to remove the routine tasks of systems admin from the to-do list, significantly lowering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the email application and releasing Andy Williams and the Production Support Department staff to focus on the company’s mission-critical production applications.  

The transition project also extended to the delivery of 24x7 support for the Domino infrastructure but also Windows O/S, SQL and TS Tech’s network. The remote support and management is further bolstered with guaranteed next day onsite support from Applicable’s messaging, platform and network teams. This top to bottom approach to the support of the messaging and collaboration estate ensures that Applicable are a trusted extension to the internal support delivered by Andy’s team. 

 A final word from Andy Williams:

“Applicable combines great technical knowledge and expertise with a real understanding of what’s important to a business. They invested time getting to understand our needs so that the project’s results made a real contribution to our business and the operations of my team. It’s great having such people on our side.”