The customer: creating vital components

Established in 1920, Eastman produces advanced materials and specialty additives for use in many everyday items. It works with customers to deliver innovative products and solutions, while maintaining a commitment to safety and sustainability that has earned it a place on the Ethisphere® Institute’s list of the World’s Most Ethical Companies®.

The challenge: addressing system performance issues

Eastman’s IT projects are critical to the success of its ongoing operations. They also play a vital role in new business initiatives that represent significant investment and can have a direct impact on the company’s bottom line.

The specialty chemicals company had used Clarity (formally CA Project & Portfolio Management) for 15 years across an increasing number of functions. Over time, the system had evolved and performance had slowed, resulting in long page display times and other rendering issues.

In order to improve the user experience and enhance their productivity, Eastman needed to address the performance of its Clarity Project and Portfolio Management system.

The solution: expert analysis and remediation

Eastman engaged CA Technologies partner and project and portfolio management specialist, Rego Consulting, to identify and rectify the underlying reasons for the loss of performance.

Rego Consulting technicians uncovered a significantly undersized system for current requirements, as well as background processes that were generating millions of rows of redundant access rights and causing the system’s front end to hang. With Rego Consulting’s assistance, the instance rights were safely removed and a script written to automatically delete them going forward.

Examining average click and display times revealed a four-second display rate on the project list page, which had a cascading effect on list page performance and other related portlets. By removing display configurations and optimizing the page, Rego Consulting improved display rates by 37 percent to two and a half seconds.

Rego Consulting also discovered and removed three-years-worth of unnecessary allocation data and it reconfigured time slice tables to a more realistic range.

These interventions dramatically reduced processing demands and significantly improved system performance.

The benefits: improving user experience and productivity

Through Rego Consulting’s knowledge and experience, Eastman’s PPM system is once again meeting the needs and expectations of its users within IT and across the organization.

By improving the Clarity solution, Eastman has been able to:
• Deliver a better user experience through faster response times and removal of unnecessary fields and data
• Increase efficiency as a result of system speed and usability
• Extend the life of and optimize its investment in the PPM system

Eastman has been able to right-size and enhance a business-critical system by working with Rego Consulting. This will help it to safeguard the effective delivery of strategic projects and initiatives for continued business success.