The systems of this company needed to be certified either as medical devices or under GMP / ISO 9000 by the Federal Food and Drug Administration. The company had a wide application portfolio including Product Development systems, Laboratory systems, Donor systems and an Enterprise Resource Planning application. A mix of custom developed, industry-specific and packaged solutions were being developed simultaneously. Multiple vendors supplied the hardware and the support components needed to run the systems. A review of the hardware model, support model and resource-sharing model was needed to respond to increasing IT costs.

Mornington led the project, including the review of existing supplier and partner relationships, a redesign of the hardware and telecommunications approaches, the design of a multi-application integration model and the prioritization of the project portfolio.

The project was to be executed over 4 weeks with a team of customer employees.

The project consisted in first establishing the status, probability of success and probability of returning benefits of all system development projects; and to review with the existing hardware and services vendors alternate architecture solutions to maximize the return on technical investment. A data exchange model was created between all the applications; and a review of suitable middleware was conducted to ensure the exchange of information in a controlled way.

We then prepared recommendations on the scope change and timeline changes needed, and reviewed the Year 2000 response plan. We also reviewed specific process issues in the areas of materials management and logistics and propose solutions.
The go-forward IT investment plan was presented to executive management.

The project was completed as scheduled. It is expected that the immediate (year 1 savings) will exceed $ 1 million. The integration model will improve IT operations. Management has an overview of its Year 2000 action plan, strong positioning for the re-opening of negotiations with key vendors, and a map of its key processes.