Industry: Tobacco Products 
Employees: 5,100

The Company

UST Inc. is a holding company with a market capitalization of more than $6.5 billion, revenue of $1.8 billion, and net earnings exceeding $530 million. The company's primary businesses manufacture and market moist smokeless tobacco products and premium wines through U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company (USSTC) and International Wine & Spirits Ltd. (IWS). A publicly held company, its shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol: UST.

The Challenge

UST had an email-based change management program it had created internally and which had served the company well for several years. With the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), however, it was clear that a new program would be needed going forward. SOX is the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 that was approved by Congress in response to high-profile business failures, in order to reinforce investor confidence and protect investors. The Act is aimed at improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosure. That, in turn, requires many companies, like UST Inc., to adopt a more efficient and reliable system to enable them to demonstrate compliance to auditors.

The SunView Software Solution

SunView prepared a customized version of a system to meet UST's requirements and presented it onsite - even before the sale had been finalized. As soon as necessary changes in the design configuration were made to meet the company's unique needs, SunView had someone fly to UST that same day and install the solution, thereby making the system operational literally within hours. By using the "best practices" IT framework and providing UST with what it needed, SunView demonstrated its commitment to service, and to delivering comprehensive solutions that transform IT change management from manual and labor-intensive to simple and streamlined.

The Results

As a result of deploying SunView's ChangeGear software, UST has seen an enormous savings in the number of man-hours involved in producing data for auditors. An audit that had typically taken up to several weeks to complete under the previous method was completed in one hour using ChangeGear. UST credits the product with doing all it promised to do, with the added bonus of having a SunView support team that is both resourceful and responsive.