IT - Business Intelligence

Context

A multinational was uable to close it’s period end books with reliability and within required time frames. Data availability was fragmented and in-accurate.

Solution

A full understanding of current business needs was carried out. Future needs were envisioned. Key business levers were identified and the nature of their change was clarified. A data warehouse was designed and built. The data warehouse was supported by a meta-layer that could be changed dynamically to reflect changes in the business e.g. shared commissions, changes in reporting structure – wihout having to do additional software development or re-washing the data.

Key ERP systems were modified so that all time and transaction sensitive data could be captured by the data warehouse during the night regardless of the volume of business traffic.

The complete environment was maintained by three IT staff. Users were trained to use the system.

Benefits

Benefits included:

• Guaranteed error-free worldwide reporting by 0800 the next morning achieved
• Reporting and analysis available at the worldwide and regional level right down to part number and line item, as well as by application, by industry, by customer etc
• Daily salesrep reporting for all reps via e-mail including fully automatic sales commission calculation updated daily
• Sales rep, sales team, country, region reporting
• Trending, period-on-period trending, reporting
• Ability to define custom equations – for commissions and margin calculations
• Possibilty of realtime reporting implemented