Arysta LifeScience

In Thomas Friedman’s latest book, The World Is Flat he reviews the ten things that have changed the world. Among the ten things are work flow, open-sourcing, off-shoring and others. Never has that been more true than when a small Colorado company Aspenware Internet Solutions (formerly Aspen Leaf Software) provided an intranet based decision process for Arysta LifeScience, a global biotechnology headquartered in Tokyo with business units on five continents.

It started simple enough with a conference call in December 2006 that included two offices in Denver, one in Tokyo and a Cortez, Colorado motel room. Arysta LifeScience was in need of a robust decision management system and had been introduced to Aspenware and its technical team as providers of web based solutions using the latest technology. Arysta LifeScience described their need for a system that would be across business units and provide for an auditable, work flow-based system for decisions as complex as divesting a business unit or as straightforward as authorizing an international business trip or a corporate donation.

Using only conference calls and web demonstrations the teams discussed complex decision processes, technology options, information security and other issues. Aspenware built an initial demonstration capability and was asked to implement a complete work flow for some sample decisions. The Arysta LifeScience team saw the power and the flexibility of the Aspenware Smart Enterprise Suite and the underlying technology, and as a result continued to refine and add capability. Contracts were signed and the team continued to do work on fine tuning the application which included decisions up to and including those made by business units heads and the CEO. The system had to accommodate multiple decisions paths, requests for additional information, coordination of all recommendations, work flow monitoring; and indexing, archiving and search for all decisions.

By May the system was nearly in place and the teams had never met face to face. Arysta had concerns about placing critical information assets and processes in the hands of a Colorado company they had never met and running on a system that they did not have in house. Despite references, insurance certificates, and other documents; was the company real, what about software escrow and a brick and mortar location? To allay some of the concerns, Arysta asked one of their outside counsels who was flying in from Salt Lake for a weekend college graduation to meet with the Aspenware team and look at the operations. On a Saturday in May when the Aspenware team was moving in to its new location, the visitor arrived and the team sat among the moving boxes and an assortment of spouses and kids to review the business arrangement. Pictures where taken of the building and the team.

Through the summer the Arysta and Aspenware teams worked through numerous enhancements, delivered training, built user and administrator manuals and the system went live on September 1st.

Other Colorado based companies contributed to this success story include Information Resource Management for the initial introduction, Maros 3000 for conferencing, and Data393 our hosting facility.

The World is Flat-take advantage of it!