Casewise helps Wolters Kluwer gain efficiencies by streamlining their IT infrastructure and processes

Wolters Kluwer has historically operated as a holding company for independent publishing business units, many of which were acquired over time. As a result, this led to:

• IT operations duplicated across almost all of their business unit
• Technology proliferation and complexity as each area designed local solution
• Diverse platforms, unique (disparate) processes and integrations required local expertise
• Old and obsolete platforms that required customization or needed to be enhanced and integrated with newer technologies (in order to deliver today’s business needs)
• Out of support systems, which were unstable, unpredictable and therefore added operational risk
• Unwieldy and costly management, support and maintenance of these technologies

In 2008, Project “Springboard” sprung, with the aim to standardize processes and simplify the technology environment across the organization – including moving away from a highly fragmented IT infrastructure to a more standardized portfolio of systems and business processes.

Wolters Kluwer chose to use an enterprise architecture approach to manage their IT portfolio and after evaluating different enterprise architecture solutions, Wolters Kluwer selected Casewise as their partner to help identify opportunities to simplify their IT portfolio and establish strategic roadmaps to achieve a target state.

Core teams in North America, as well as Europe, with support from each of the Business Units and key internal groups (e.g., eCommerce, Business Intelligence, etc.) worked collaboratively to tackle these challenges. The team utilized Casewise’s Corporate Modeler Enterprise Edition Suite, Portal, and Casewise’s consulting support to identify all of their applications globally, the “health” of each application as well as the cost to support each while also developing an ideal “target state” with a roadmap to get there.

Using Casewise, Wolters Kluwer was able to establish a single repository of information for their Operating IT assets, so now all Business Units have a line of sight into what’s currently in place and where they are heading. In addition, by partnering with Casewise, Wolters Kluwer was able to identify opportunities for efficiencies resulting in significant cost savings.

As a result of these insights, Wolters Kluwer has subsequently initiated consolidation efforts for:

Wolters Kluwer is also using Casewise as the system of record for their strategic IT roadmaps. These roadmaps are used in conjunction with the inventory to evaluate candidate projects during the annual project portfolio review process.

Next up is to have broader collaboration across the 24 Business Units - by providing advanced reporting & executive dashboards to key stakeholders using Casewise’s Corporate Modeler Intelligence (CMI).