Solutions
Boomi
As one of the pioneers in enterprise iPaaS, Boomi has a deep understanding of the market’s key needs. Boomi quickly, easily, and securely unites your digital ecosystem so you can instantly connect everyone to everything. Its intelligent, flexible, and scalable cloud-based platform ensures always-on business continuity.
Boomi accelerates and simplifies discovery, organization, and management of your data, making it actionable across the business. By harnessing the power of the cloud to connect employees regardless of location to your applications, systems, processes, and customers, Boomi enables organizations to foster trust by maintaining human and business connections.
Boomi liberates your organization from fragile connections and legacy technology to maximize ROI from your investments, and drives better total economic impact by offering greater operational speed and agility that translates into higher productivity so you can focus on strategic initiatives that create competitive advantage.
TechStone implements CPQ solutions that help your sales reps and partners spend less time quoting and more time selling. Our solutions allow you to deliver quotes faster than your competitors. We can help you streamline approvals including one-off customization requests that can be routed for feasibility, pricing and lead time. These solutions help eliminate mistakes and improve customer relationships. We deliver these through the cloud like our other solutions lowering your costs and improving your timeliness.
A custom proprietary architecture developed internally by TechStone. The framework leverages a canonical data model utilizing multiple abstract layers. As well, it provides an event driven architecture allowing for process orchestration and business logic encapsulation. Below are more details.
- Abstractions
- Business Process Layer
- Transport Delivery Layer
- Business Message Layer
- Domain Specific Processing Layer
- Canonical Data Model
- Segmented internal and external interfaces
- Common integration data model
- Common business process objects and reporting
- Event Driven Architecture
- Layer Approach
- External API Abstractions
- Internal business logic encapsulation
- Process Orchestration
- Integration Design Patterns
- Blue Printing
- Reference Implementations
- API Management
- Internal API’s
- External API’s
- Service Enablemet
TechStone’s solution to help clients standardize on PIDX in the energy industry.
- Designed and implemented PIDX Order Management documents (Order Create, Order Response and Invoice) to backend ERP systems (SAP, JDE, Oracle)
- Integrated Rosettanet v2.0 Objects that include attachments with eMarketplaces and suppliers
- Established best practices for identifying and resolving critical issues with data shared between industry leaders.
- We know how to solve the eProcurement problem with data integration using PIDX and canonicals!
- We’ve already gone through the integration challenges for:
- Shell
- Chevron (Ariba Buying Network)
- ConocoPhillips
- Exxon/Mobile
- Oildex
- Anadarko
- EOG
- Chesapeake
- Questar
- DO2 (formerly Digital Oilfield)
- ARC Resources
- EnCana (US and Canada)
- Noble Energy
TechStone provides Middleware clients the unique ability to upgrade to the latest version of webMethods or Oracle SOA Suite in a rapid and proven process. This Rapid Upgrade program is achieved with a proven process methodology and accelerated deployment approach. This approach includes concurrent phases that combine planning, functional requirements and development. TechStone provides small but highly experienced teams that are cross-trained. Using a proven pattern of upgrading, TechStone provides consistent resources throughout all phases of the upgrade. Deployment is accelerated through this leveraged knowledge and experience. The results are an efficient and successful upgrade that manages down costs and time.
Below is a list of some of those tasks associated with this Rapid Upgrade program.
- Infrastructure Pre-Upgrade Preparation
- Pre-Upgrade Analysis of Current Configuration
- Prepare Test Cases
- First Iteration Production Cloning
- Apply Applications Upgrade
- Run Test Cases Against First Iteration
- Second Iteration Production Cloning
- Apply applications Upgrade
- Run Test Cases Against Second Iteration
Field tickets have been manual for decades and there’s great change in the industry as companies turn these paper tickets into tablets and laptops. TechStone implements solutions that enable oilfield service providers to capture the important data from traditional tickets on mobile devices and synch this data whether online or offline. Not only does TechStone implement and configure these solutions but we can also help train your drivers and field operations personnel. Change management is an important part of TechStone’s oilfield service offerings. Integration is also very important and TechStone can provide multiple solutions for integrating these field tickets into your back office ERP systems that can include everything from cloud solutions like Netsuite and Microsoft NAV, Dynamics AX, SAP, Oracle, and JD Edwards.
Provide your customer to approve invoices on any mobile device from anywhere at any time. Capture invoice grievances instantly for immediate action and get paid quickly. TechStone has designed and developed a simple to use portals and for order management systems in financial organizations. These drag and drop solutions are designed to provide key workflows to manage the processes leading to payments in a dashboard with reporting functionality. This includes customized KPI’s and multi-views for instant visibility and actions. Data is real-time based on the enterprise systems in which it is integrated which can include any ERP (Microsoft,JDE, SAP, Oracle), database or third party system. The technology is in the cloud so the costs of investment support and maintenance are minimal.
Through mergers, acquisitions and organic growth, companies are faced with more complex supply chains in which to conduct transactions both with external and internal partners. TechStone helps companies:
- Develop single unified platforms in which to send data through their supply chains which reduces costs and complexities that are inherent in organizations with growth
- Provides a platform that enhances business process management and trading partner interactions
- Automate trading partner management by supporting a company’s existing EDI customers and suppliers through standards-based protocols. (These standards include; EDIINT (AS2), ANSI X12, UCS, EDIFACT and others)
Documents such as purchase orders, purchase order requests and invoices can be sent and received via EDIINT, XML or custom formats from Web services in real-time, batched and over the internet. EDI is still the most popular platform for sending financial documents only now more organizations are automating this platform and its processes. Lower cost EDI solutions have limited the value of some of the newer B2B standards. Companies are continuing to look towards extending the value of EDI through EDIINT as well as hybrid solutions.
TechStone has implemented integration solutions with SAP since its inception in 2004. Integrating applications and partners with SAP have been the core of our business, especially since TechStone is headquartered in Houston and works with the energy space embedded in SAP. Since SAP ECC version 5.0 TechStone has been helping SAP customers with their middleware strategy and integration projects. With HANA, SAP customers want to consolidate their middleware platforms with IPaaS and TechStone helps with these selections as well as design, architecture, and the execution of these integrations.
SAP’s IPaaS offering is based on their Hana Cloud Integration (HCI) which is based in their Hana Cloud Platform (HCP). This supports application and data integration, event streaming and API management, batch and real-time replication. HCI is an embedded component of an expanding number of SAP cloud offerings. Because of HCI’s focus in SAP, it’s limited in the offerings for third party adapters for SaaS solutions and on-prem packaged applications. SAP’s IPaaS offering is still young in its maturity compared to some of its competitors. This is apparent in its lack of functionality, cloud characteristics, platform availability and reliability. Ease of use also suffers in a model less mature such as HCI as well as functionality around Disaster Recovery.
Gartner finds the following; ‘Clients rated SAP as below average in pricing. Inadequate pricing models, price points or overall perceived TCO are the top reasons why prospects discard HCI during their iPaaS evaluation processes.
TechStone recommends working with Software AG and Boomi for SAP HANA integrations. Software AG’s webMethods platform has been part of SAP’s strategic footprint since it was OEM’d in the 1990s as SAP NetWeaver. Since then, SAP customers have used webMethods for thousands of integration projects throughout the world. Migrating your webMethods applications from on prem to the cloud makes sense in taking advantage of the IPaaS technology’s advantages. The updated product is a true blend of speed and configuration functionality. Web services haven’t been easier to design, deploy and govern. TechStone provides the necessary migration planning to move to the latest version of webMethods. The webMethods.io platform allows businesses to exchange documents in the cloud and avoid costly infrastructure. The platform provides end to end visibility into B2B transactions across the trading network, offering a new approach to partner management. The new UI improves productivity, offering clarity and intuitive navigations with minimal clicks.
One of the greatest challenges with a S/4 HANA project is getting access to SAP data. Unlocking SAP data to be used by all other applications is a challenge. Removing data complexity by allowing companies to plug in both SAP and non-SAP systems and extract data with pre-defined configurations can greatly accelerate the data management process. TechStone partners with Boomi to provide the Boomi aXis solution for S/4 HANA projects. Boomi aXis removes the barriers of data access and empowers the business to self-service its SAP data foundation. Boomi aXis supports data centric open standards to help optimize time and labor. Companies can now match the speed they have with non-SAP systems without compromising the existing SAP governance. As companies focus on plans to migrate to S/4 HANA tools for handling data like aXis become critical.
Benefits include;
- Accelerates implementations
- Removes SAP resource constraints
- Improves decision-making
- Synchronizes SAP with non-SAP data
Another area that TechStone excels in helping oilfield companies is in providing training solutions including change management consulting. We can help you prepare and design training material for your field operations that include presentations, brochures, and other elements needed. We can also help with both hands on training as well as assisting with training the trainer. Change Management is a big part of our offerings in helping you develop processes in which to best ease your field operations personnel to use the technology needed to bring efficiency to your company.
TechStones proprietary Healthcheck solution that solves clients performance issues as well provides a thorough evaluation and findings exercise for their Middleware environment.
- Platform and Configuration Discovery
- Solution Review – What does the Client have deployed today
- Identify system deficiencies and target improvements
- Platform analysis – Server, Hardware, OS, DB, and Middleware Suite configuration
- Middleware Suite Analysis – Review solutions deployed on Middleware Suite
- Deliverables
- Architecture Assessment and recommendation
- Platform configuration and solution architecture
- Capacity, Scalability, Extensibility, Backups, DR, High Availability
- File Storage for large documents (File system vs. RDBMS)
- Server virtualization and impacts (VMWare)
TechStone’s proprietary Roadmap solution that helps clients plan for their future using Middleware.
- Road Map Discovery – 3-5 year timeframe: Gather and Document current and future state
- Analysis – Analyze objectives and capacity for 3-5 year plan
- Topics to include
- Architecture
- Clustering
- Backups
- DR
- Scalability
- Extensibility
- Maintenance
- Capacity Planning
TechStone Order to Cash solution that includes analysis, requirements gathering, tool selection, design, development, testing and support for Middleware clients. Can save clients hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars in eliminating redundant processes, automating processes, integrating systems and processes and reducing the O2C cycle.
TechStone Procure to Pay solution that includes analysis, requirements gathering, tool selection, design, development, testing and support for Middleware clients. TechStone specializes in providing both the business analytic skillsets helping client onboard suppliers as well as more technical services with the actual integration of suppliers systems.