Interface is an Atlanta-based floor-coverings business with operations around the world. Interface is a classic target for the financial systems software sector’s unstoppable sales and marketing machine but it is a business that believes in doing things right rather than doing things fast.

Interface first began a rigorous selection process for a new suite of financial systems in 2000, with each of the divisions across office and domestic floor tiles and carpets polled on the product options. A financial software suite from JD Edwards emerged as first choice for all departments except for the fabrics division, where the best-selling SAP software was preferred. Interface was preparing to implement SAP when a global stock market downturn halted new projects at the business. By 2004 business was looking up and software acquisition was back on the agenda. This time the JD Edwards product emerged as the clear choice of Interface accounting personnel and

Larry Wallace, vice-president of global financial services, considered how the system could be rolled out across continents and throughout the financial and operational sides of the company. “I implemented JD Edwards across general ledger and accounts and it was a complete success,” he says.

But the challenge of keeping internationally-dispersed supply chains in synch has proved more complex. “We are very decentralised,” he explains, “and what happened here is that one division began to use JD Edwards to resolve a bottleneck in manufacturing. That’s how a product like this makes an impact: a business unit learns about it via one application and then they get interested in using it for financials.”

While JD Edwards was proving popular at Interface, it was also changing ownership in the takeover frenzy that has characterised the IT industry in recent years. First PeopleSoft bought it, and then PeopleSoft was acquired by industry giant Oracle, where the JD Edwards product was rebranded EnterpriseOne.

Interface intended to run every part of the application off just one reliable piece of hardware, an IBM AS/400 machine. But this created a snag. “Our European colleagues were concerned about the response times if we used one machine located in the US,” says Mr Wallace. The potential problem was that a series of incremental network interruptions or delays could create a slowly-widening divide between the US and European versions of the company’s books, with obvious implications for corporate governance issues.

Interface is still wrestling with a final decision on this question. Technically it is feasible to run a worldwide financial package on one or two machines. The quality of available systems linked to commercial back-up services means that a crash is not a huge worry with the single machine option.

But financial controls add their own woes if a second piece of hardware is running. “If you want to add a new account to the operation you have to make sure it is not anywhere in there first or you may wind up with duplication,” says Mr Wallace. “And corporate governance rests on a foundation of 18 data elements. So if you are running two systems and want to add a new vendor there has to be a global master copy of the data.” In other words, Interface needs to have one single version of the truth that is respected across its divisions.

Mr Wallace is based at Interface’s HQ in Atlanta but spent half of June 2007 in the Netherlands discussing the way ahead with Jan Hasselman, finance director for Europe. Based at the company’s InterfaceFLOR floor tiles division at Scherpenzeel outside Amsterdam, Mr Hasselman says too many of his financial processes still demand manual inputting. “Today we are reliant on too much tailor made software and this really is due for replacement,” he explains. “As we move on to JD Edwards there will be a lot of work we can automate”.

Reducing the number of systems in operation feeds into another Interface goal. Its founder and chairman Ray Anderson has declared energy efficiency to be a corporate objective as Interface strives for a zero carbon footprint by 2020. It already claims to have achieved savings of $336m via energy efficiency measures since 1996. As JD Edwards has arrived, a number of dispersed financial packages from suppliers such as Infinium and Spectra are set to disappear. And less hardware will be employed. “Anything that reduces the number of products we run translates into a smaller IT footprint and less power consumption,” Mr Wallace points out.

But the prime motivation for Interface’s strategic shift on to a single version of the truth for all financials is simplicity in a complicated world. “Getting a view on the information we need to run the business is what we are trying to do. Right now, if someone asks me who our top ten customers are I have to send out e-mails requesting that information. I do not want to have to wait for replies to e-mails. I want that information right there on my desktop.”

It has taken several years, but by 2008 Mr Wallace should get his wish.