D&H Distributing Drastically Reduces Its Reliance On Custom Scripts

An ActiveBatch Workload Automation Success Story

D&H Distributing, one of the largest electronics distributors in North America, faced a variety of issues stemming from its multiple legacy automation solutions. These issues included:

  • A lack of support for the cross-platform processes and data sources for growth;

  • Time-intensive researching, writing, and testing custom scripts for automated tasks, especially for Microsoft Dynamics AX and IBM Cognos BI;
  • The expenses associated with maintaining multiple costly, static, legacy automation tools;
  • A portfolio of isolated applications that were never designed to communicate with each other, resulting in an inability to integrate with core business applications.

By The Numbers

40%

The portion of jobs D&H assembles exclusively with ActiveBatch’s prebuilt, pretested Job Steps, reducing manual errors.

292k

The number of executable jobs D&H runs across 7 branches each year, having scaled its operations.

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D&H Implements ActiveBatch

When D&H licensed ActiveBatch, the plan was to have ActiveBatch work alongside the enterprise job scheduler that was already in place. D&H therefore decided to focus on several of ActiveBatch’s features and capabilities:

  • The ActiveBatch Integrated Jobs Library, providing prebuilt Job Steps, significantly reduces the time developers spend working on custom scripts;
  • ActiveBatch’s extensions for Microsoft SCOM, Dynamics AX, SharePoint, and Team Foundation Server, plus extensions for IBM Cognos BI, VMware, and more, to build reliable, end-to-end workflows without the need for custom scripts;
  • ActiveBatch’s Reference Functionality allows developers to reuse job templates that, when modified, pass those modifications to all jobs that reference it, making workflow changes quick and seamless while reducing manual errors.

In Their Own Words

"ActiveBatch is clearly designed for change­ —its architecture allows us to see IT Automation to proactively impact operations, rather than a way to simply react.”

"ActiveBatch’s assembler allows us to quickly build workflows based on any kind of dependency, including event completion. ActiveBatch reduces lag time, improves resource utilization, and eliminates manual intervention.”

How D&H Succeeded with ActiveBatch

Consolidated their automation tools, cutting expenses and reducing complexity

Eliminated unnecessary scripting, saving both time and resources while reducing errors

Connected applications and systems that were previously incompatible, creating an integrated, simplified environment

Shared data and managed dependencies between disparate systems, allowing D&H to take a more strategic approach to workflows
  
  


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