Business Need
The Mead Corporation is one of the leading North American producers of coated paper, coated paperboard and consumer and office products, a world leader in multiple packaging and specialty paper, and a producer of high-quality corrugating medium. The company is "embracing eCommerce technology as a strategic tool for competition."1 In order to make e-commerce a reality enterprise-wide, implementation on a common, extensible and scalable platform is required.

Also required is an eCommerce platform that will not only integrate with SAP (the centralized ERP system that is currently being implemented at Mead), but also other legacy ERP systems that will continue to be in use during the multi-year SAP implementation period. At the corporate level, Mead management was concerned with the resources required to maintain an eCommerce Web site for each of Mead's divisions. Historically each division developed and maintained its own individual Web site. This led to an inefficient use of resources, duplicate development efforts and confusion among customers.

The Mead Paper division, together with technology partner Meritage Technologies and an advertising agency, formed a team of technology, business and branding experts to create an extensible eBusiness framework to fulfill Mead Paper's business, technology and online branding needs.

eBusiness Strategy
Mead Paper engaged Meritage Technologies to architect and develop an eBusiness platform designed to accommodate their business goals. Meritage began a Functional Analysis and Design project to identify the requirements for the proposed system, working closely with Mead personnel from several company divisions, as well as Mead's Corporate Information Resources (CIR) department, SAP Enterprise team, and Mead's own advertising agency. Meritage consolidated this information into a single Project Workbook, detailing a system architecture designed to address Mead's operational needs - for today as well as the future.

Solution
Meritage developed a robust eBusiness architecture taking advantage of Mead's Information Resources' core competency in Lotus Notes development. Using Notes as a platform for static content management, Meritage was able to provide Mead with easy-to-maintain tools for information management, tailored to each division, while at the same time allowing the IR department to maintain code in a single location. Adding to this functionality, Meritage developed custom eBusiness applications with IBM's WebSphere Application Server (WAS) to provide access to the SAP ERP system.

The Mead eBusiness application provides tools for many divisions. Across all SAP-enabled divisions, the architecture provides real-time inventory availability, pricing specific to each individual customer, production schedules, product reservations, order entry (directly integrated with SAP), and real-time order status. For the customer's accounts payable departments, the application provides online business documentation, including bills of lading, production documents, and online invoices.

Perhaps as important as what the system provides today is the flexibility designed into the system to accommodate future needs. Currently, not all Mead divisions are on the SAP system. By utilizing a three-tier architecture, Meritage developed the capability to adapt to many different situations. The middle tier provides Java-based business objects designed to interact with SAP and other ERP systems on the bottom tier, while outputting XML data for rendering by the top tier XSL implementation. This flexible architecture allows data to be accessed not only from the SAP system, but also from many others, such as PeopleSoft, BPCs, and other legacy systems.

Results

• Increased efficiency
• Improved customer satisfaction through self-service applications
• Increased brand awareness and integrity