Customer stories

The Dutch Ministry of Defence

What if you could orchestrate all processes in one single integrated platform and streamline your existing 3,000 applications? The Dutch Ministry of Defence now makes use of a unified and integrated IT system that is completely connected to their existing IT solutions and reduces the money they spend on ICT

Challenges

  • Support dynamic needs at the lowest cost
  • Faster response to changing needs
  • Reduce the cost of maintenance

Results

  • Increased flexibility, speed, and quality

  • Harmonized and modernized scattered IT landscape

  • Enabled real time process monitoring and data access

Story

Business case

With more than 78,000 employees, the Ministry of Defence is one of the largest employers in the Netherlands. The Operational Commands (naval, land, and air forces), the Marechaussee (military police), the Support Command (CDC), and the Defence Material Organizations bear resemblance to corporate organizations and have to deal with the same kind of operating challenges.

The Dutch Ministry of Defence now makes use of a unified and integrated IT system that is completely connected to their existing IT solutions and reduces the money they spend on ICT.


In order to manage all its operating processes, the Ministry of Defence uses various IT solutions. The existing application landscape is rather complex—it consists of more than 3,000 applications, which support the operations within the Ministry. Each application supports only a small part of a process, and the Ministry of Defence wants a single platform that can support complete processes to reduce complexity and maintenance costs.

Other important drivers are budgetary constraints and political realities. Tightening budgets are forcing the Ministry of Defence to scale back IT spending, but at the same time, they have to increase flexibility and responsiveness to the end-users.

The solution

To address the challenges of a heterogeneous landscape of applications, the Ministry issued a European tender for an integrated SOA/BPM platform. OpenText™ Process Automation was selected following a thorough analysis of the market offerings in the business process management (BPM) and SOA-based integration space.

OpenText Process Automation provides a single integrated platform that automates and streamlines the processes between different departments, especially HR, logistics, and finance. Existing applications were integrated, and new applications were built along with restructuring the existing ones.

To date, the Ministry of Defence focuses on the automation of a number of key departments and processes with OpenText Process Automation, including: HR Process Leave, IT Change Process, and Artillery Fire Support Chain.

Partner Aquima

Together with business rules solution provider Aquima, OpenText Process Automation has implemented a rules-based business process management system that automates the processes with enough flexibility to accommodate constant changes in rules and structures.

Under the alliance, Aquima’s leading-edge business rules engine is available as a completely integrated add-on component to the OpenText Process Automation platform. Through this powerful combination of process (BPM) and business rules and decision management capabilities, OpenText Process Automation enables the Ministry to lower its operations costs and reduce cost of change because a lot of manual process handling is removed.

Business benefits

With the integrated SOA/BPM platform from OpenText Process Automation, the Ministry can now respond more quickly to changing needs of the various elements of the armed forces and end users. It provides a greater degree of flexibility in the IT domain, and the costs associated with implementing changes to processes are reduced significantly.

OpenText's expertise in BPM and software integration capabilities helped the Ministry of Defence become more agile by making their IT systems open and more responsive to business needs, simpler to develop, and easier to maintain and manage. The Ministry of Defence is now able to manage, monitor, and optimize their business processes with unparalleled ease and cost effectiveness.

With the integrated SOA/BPM platform from OpenText [Process Automation], the Dutch Ministry of Defence can now respond more quickly to changing needs of the various elements of the armed forces and end users.


About The Dutch Ministry of Defence

The Netherlands Ministry of Defence comprises the Central Staff, the Royal Netherlands Navy, the Royal Netherlands Army, the Royal Netherlands Air Force, the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, the Support Command, and the Defence Material Organization. It is one of the largest employers in The Netherlands with more than 78,000 employees. This includes men and women in uniform serving in the armed services and organizational departments. There are approximately 20,500 members of staff working as civilian labor force, mainly in the armed forces administration and in support areas.

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