Canadian Pacific Rail Limited
Canadian Pacific Railway speeds information across continent with leading-edge Microsoft technology strategy
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Company Overview
CPR is one of the largest railway systems in North America with more than 25,000-route kilometers (15,500 miles) of rail line in Canada and the United States. With roots dating back to the nineteenth century, CPR remains today, at the vanguard of rail transportation in Canada. The company generates approximately $4 billion (CDN) in annual revenues and has more than 20,000 employees.
A wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian Pacific Limited, which also owns Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, Fording Coal Ltd. and CP Ships, CPR's fleet consists of 1,615 locomotives and 54,000 rail cars. More than 52 per cent of the company's revenue comes from traffic moving within Canada, 30 per cent from traffic between Canada and the U.S., and 18 per cent from traffic moving within the continental United States.
In 1995, CPR began a sweeping reorganization that resulted in the relocation of its headquarters from Montreal to Calgary. Chosen because it was quickly becoming a key center of economic activity, Calgary was and continues to be a vital transportation hub for the West, where the railway conducts more than 80 per cent of its business.
CPR has also created an eastern subsidiary, the St. Lawrence & Hudson Railway that is headquartered in Montreal and is responsible for operations in the Montreal-Toronto-Chicago corridors, and throughout the Northeastern U.S. CPR is always looking for new ways to improve service, deliver greater efficiencies and lower costs to its own organization, as well as its customers in both Canada and the U.S.
Business Challenge
For CPR, moving information between its widely scattered office locations has also become as important as moving freight along its rail lines. And, improving workflow among employees means increased customer satisfaction, smoother processes, better accuracy and improved business results.
However, the sheer size and complexity of its operations, as well as the geographical and communication challenges inherent in its organization, meant that CPR needed a leading-edge communication solution to enable and support its vast physical infrastructure. In late 1999, after evaluating the increased potential of the web, CPR made another strategic and historical decision: it would embrace the Internet and build its e-business to better serve its customers, employees, vendors and suppliers through enhanced communications and information sharing.
The business challenge faced by CPR was to select an appropriate solution that would fulfill its current and future needs -- one that could be developed and deployed in a manner that would enable a controlled and successful migration from its legacy systems.
Options Explored
"CP Rail was using a 15-year-old, messaging system for in-house communication," says Allen Borak, vice president of information services for Canadian Pacific Rail Limited. "The result was that we had a very limited ability to share documents and information between our employees. Retrieval of information was also difficult, and there was a lack of consistency because we had two levels of information - shared information and information stored on individual personal computers."
This meant that often, divisions and departments had to rely on the relatively slower modes of fax or mail to move information. After careful study, the decision was made to upgrade CPR's technology landscape. But it wasn't simply a matter of finding a new e-mail system to do this.
"In fact, our previous solution was more than simply an e-mail system," says Borak. "It was also a portal to CPR's many business applications, workgroups and workflow solutions." The business challenge therefore, was to find a totally integrated solution that would deliver the e-mail and workgroup computing capabilities to more than 450 individual locations, furnish CPR employees with a similar look and feel for applications across the entire company, and give universal and improved accessibility through a single URL.
There would also be a huge logistics challenge that included deployment, conversion and migration of files, training and support. "First we established our criteria, then a detailed evaluation of several alternatives lead us to choose Exchange, said Borak.
The criteria for CPR's solution included an ability to integrate across all desktops delivering a common look and feel; it should feature a well-conceived evolutionary path and direction from the past to the future; it would provide an option for third-party support; and, its technical direction would also support new and future initiatives such as wireless computing. One company stood out far above the rest.
Solution
According to Gary Stedman, IS Strategist for Canadian Pacific Rail Limited, CPR chose the Microsoft technology platform, anchored by Microsoft Exchange 2000 and Windows 2000 operating system, to enable its e-business technology strategy through an infrastructure before e-business (ib4e) approach.
This meant that CPR would develop and deliver an e-business system in a sequential and cumulative manner to avoid conflict between systems, allow users to become familiar with the intuitive ease of a common presentation screen, and reduce any potential for operational incompatibility.
"We were an early adopter of the Microsoft Exchange 2000 messaging and collaboration solution," says Stedman, "but after reviewing its capabilities, we knew that it would enable us to move forward with a browser-based service, allow us to remove tethers to our legacy environment, and, at the same time, simplify administration of mail, file, print and other desktop services."
The goal of the ib4e program was to provide the first phase of deliverables in the multi-year infrastructure project as the prerequisites to web-mail, eProcurement and other Year 2000 e-business initiatives. The program was designed to allow CPR to retire its legacy messaging solution this year.
In effect, the ib4e program has two points of focus. First, it is creating a technical infrastructure to support Internet, communication and collaborative initiatives through a standards-based approach that ensures a uniform set of applications for everyone across the company. Next, it will build a services infrastructure to support CPR's planned IT growth into a comprehensive e-business-centric operation.
Also, to ensure continuity, alignment and timeliness of the e-business infrastructure work being undertaken, the company's initiatives were developed as a coordinated, overall program. CPR, working with Microsoft, laid a solid foundation for a Microsoft-based computing solution.
For CPR, the first order of business was to create a standardized web mail system to anchor communication lines across the company and support subsequent IT and e-business projects. As a result, the company is deploying Microsoft Exchange 2000 across its enterprise.
For instance, the company will use Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory service to provide application and data hosting, processing, and a presentation platform that will facilitate and support CPR's Web-based business applications and communications.
Next, CPR will develop a networking structure and a directory services infrastructure based on Internet standards. In addition, the company will utilize the Web Storage System, to provide data management practices and technologies for new as well as existing three terabytes of unstructured data.
To deliver a client/browser gateway, the IT department will create a client environment that will enable the introduction of e-business technologies including the minimum gateway functionality needed to replace its existing infrastructure.
The ib4e program began in pilot mode in March 2000, with Microsoft Exchange 2000 and Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory designed and installed to provide both a proof of concept, and proof of sustainability. By May, web mail was in full swing with more than 1000 users expected by year-end, and a full complement of 9,000 users connected by mid-year in 2001.
Business Benefits
"The benefits we are already beginning to see include increased mobility of our users since they have access to mail and web-based applications via a web-browser," says Stedman. In addition, CPR employees will have a common browser-based interface into CPR's business application environment, and be able to use the Microsoft Office Suite of office productivity tools for personal effectiveness gains.
For CPR, another benefit is having a single place to store corporate information on the corporate intranet, and a reduced total cost of ownership relative to other solutions on the marketplace.
Finally CPR will be able to meet business continuity planning needs relative to the corporate mail/data service by providing 24 X 7 mail service, along with timely recovery of both the service and the data from either an incident or a disaster.
Future plans include utilizing standard Microsoft templates for improved effectiveness including document libraries for manuals, reports and other CPR related works, discussion databases for problem solving, meeting and action items for planning and accountability, as well as calendaring and scheduling.
"As we move further along in the process, we will be looking to expand our e-business initiatives in almost any area that will enable us to automate and improve results," says Borak. "Working with Microsoft has been a very positive experience as they have furnished us with excellent support both locally and from headquarters. As early deployers of Microsoft Exchange 2000, we are realizing the benefits of such a solution already. It's a win-win situation for both."
For More Information
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