Spartech Corporate Intranet

Company Profile

Spartech Corporation is a leading producer of extruded thermoplastic sheet and roll stock, polymeric compounds, and custom engineered plastic products. We have several manufacturing facilities located throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe, with annual production capacity of more than 1.4 billion pounds and sales of approximately $1.2 billion. With a dedicated group of 3700 employees working to manufacture the highest quality plastic products for a wide range of applications in the packaging, transportation, recreation, building & construction, sign, and graphics markets.

Business Challenge

Spartech was experiencing business challenges supporting two document management solutions, Microsoft’s SharePoint Portal 2003 and EMC’s Documentum eRoom. Their need entailed combining document management and collaboration features into a single standardized platform. The following were key objectives they hoped to achieve:

-       Drive end-user adoption.

-       Eliminate licensing requirements for two Enterprise systems.

-       Standardize access requirements.

-       Centralize document management.

o    Improve accessibility to Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS).

o    Standardize legal document access and retention policies.

-       Leverage workflow features to support business process.

o    Help Desk business process.   

Solution

Business decision to consolidate the Enterprise into one Collaboration and Document management system using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies. Leveraging the latest functionality provided in the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Technologies included:

-       Enterprise Search

-       Workflow solutions

-       Collaboration

Upgrade methods included following Microsoft’s best practice approach for a gradual in-place upgrade of the current SPS2003 environment.  A custom Workflow solution was developed to provide additional capabilities.

Benefits

Organization has been delighted with advances of the MOSS 2007 System. Further benefits will be made available after upgrades to other Microsoft Back Office systems have been completed.