Global Management Reporting with SAP BO Dashboards at Kemira

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1 Processes & Applications, SAP Business & Technology Consulting Information when you need it: Consolidated, global reporting platform available both online and offline Global Management Reporting with SAP BO Dashboards at Kemira It s just like with Formula 1 racing drivers. They have to be able to see everything at a glance in a matter of seconds. All of the relevant parameters must be available in real time at any time of the day or night. And it s no different for top management at chemical company Kemira. For the company to remain competitive internationally, it must have instant access to the information it needs anywhere in the world - both online and offline - as and when it needs it. Corporate Business Solutions

2 About Kemira OJY Kemira is a global chemicals company that is focused on serving customers in water-intensive industries. The company offers water quality and quantity management that improves customers energy, water, and raw material efficiency. The Kemira Group employs a workforce of more than 5,000 in 40 countries. In 2010, it recorded sales of approx. 2.2 billion euros. The company is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland. Initial Situation In mid 2010, chemical company Kemira OJY was faced with the challenge of migrating its Web and Excel-based reporting system to a new tool designed for management reporting. This Web-based reporting solution had been implemented in an SAP portal environment using standard SAP BW reports. Due to top management s ever increasing demands regarding information quality and visualization, however, access to the reports was becoming more and more complex. To analyze the data, users had to have a thorough understanding of

3 the tools and be extremely familiar with SAP terminology. In addition, the reports themselves were not intuitive and performance was extremely poor. In short, the reporting tool was too technical and not user friendly enough. But that s not all. The company was also using Excel -based reports with its SAP BW in addition to its Web reports. Every month, data was extracted from SAP BW, copied to Excel where it was adjusted manually, summarized, and provided to management. This process was extremely time consuming, susceptible to errors, and lacked transparency. A Top Reporting Solution for Top Management The aim of the project was to provide a new top reporting tool that could provide the information that is crucial to manage the company in a suitable format using the data in SAP BW. Using state-of-the-art technology, this solution was to be implemented centrally and available throughout the entire organization. As well as being extremely user friendly and easy to operate, the solution had to be able to provide the data offline. ments regarding the optical visualization of the data, the provision of highly aggregated KPIs from various divisions in the company, such as consolidated financial data, cost component splits, sales information, stock histories, and price trends, rounded off the goals of the new top reporting solution. High Standards are an Excellent Basis for a Project Kemira s new top reporting solution aimed to: Visualize KPIs at top management level (Executive Board and Segment Controlling) Establish a uniform reporting platform within the organization Provide a uniform and standardized reporting option as well as standard and harmonized KPIs throughout the company Replace standalone solutions in Microsoft Excel and provide transparent, traceable data Provide a maximum level of user friendliness to cater for user groups who had not worked with reporting tools before Secure a high level of user buy-in Leverage the existing SAP BW system as a data basis Evaluation Jyrki Mäki-Kala, CFO at Kemira: I like this!... Many information but one view, only. That s what we at Kemira call the falcon sight-seeing. For cbs, Kemira s requirements were a welcome driver for choosing a suitable solution. To do so, the consultants from Heidelberg first developed a prototype that demonstrated the fields of application of the SAP BO tools. The SAP BO applications support operative reporting and enable adhoc reports, analyses, and dashboards to be created more quickly. The SAP BusinessObjects products also feature tools for improving data quality, for data integration, as well as for planning and budgeting. All of the BusinessObjects tools are open and easy to use, which is just one of the reasons Compared to the old reporting system, the new solution also had to provide additional functions including management dashboards. In addition to stringent requirecbs Corporate Business Solutions. The Materna Group Management Consultancy.

4 why the environment has already been accepted. Even though cbs shortlist for the prototype included various alternative BO tools, only one was able to fulfill most of the chemical company s requirements: the BO Dashboards. Dashboards are used to develop Flash-based applications that can be embedded in various other applications (Microsoft Office, Web, PDF) and are highly compatible with SAP BW. Furthermore, the Flash-based applications can fulfill Kemira s stringent demands with regard to graphical visualization in line with the company s corporate identity. The cbs solution ensured that it was easy to navigate within and between the dashboards and provided a high level of performance as well as offline use, even without a network connection. At the same time, Kemira promoted the specifications for the dashboards. In doing so, it identified the critical KPIs and characteristics and derived the first, graphical visualization variants. The requirements were collected from all user departments ranging from Finance/ Controlling through Procurement and Sales to SCM and HR. These specifications were evaluated in terms of their technical feasibility in a series of initial workshops. The data sources required in SAP BW were identified and a general layout for the dashboards designed. Kemira s existing corporate identity served as a guideline for the color pallet and other layouts, for example, thus ensuring that the system had a uniform look and feel. The basic idea was to implement thethe basic idea was to implement the dashboards with a product character. This meant that the dashboards were to be accessible through a simple link and then all navigation was to take place within the dashboards themselves. The result was a simple yet intuitive navigation concept that offered a lot of space for the actual content the data and graphics. Overview of the Project The Three Phases to Success Phase 1 Dashboards designed with Microsoft Excel Phase 2 Prototype implemented using different tools (including Web-Intelligence and Xcelsius ) and then evaluated. Phase 3 Specified dashboards implemented with SAP BO Dashboards.

5 A quick design that passed the test and was successfully implemented All in all, over 40 dashboards were developed, which were structured in four packages. The first package contained highly summarized dashboards. Rather than providing further drilldown options, these dashboards merely allow users to filter the data. This ensures an extremely high level of performance. An entire offline function was realized as an additional feature. The required data is provided monthly in XML files. If there is no online connection, the system automatically accesses this calculated data. Drilldown functions were added in three further packages. By clicking individual areas, users can filter the data and then display the relevant details. The filters (selections in the general filter area or drilldowns) generally affect all of the charts to ensure that the view of the data is consistent. When working with the dashboards, users are constantly guided through the defined drilldown levels. Although this means that they do not have complete freedom when navigating through the data, this is precisely what the company wanted. Other tools, which provide a range of suitable functions, are available for navigating freely through the data. The queries required for SAP BW were developed to supply data for the dashboards. To do so, cbs and Kemira used some existing queries. In the future, Kemira hopes to achieve further performance improvements by using in-memory technology. This technology provides a cost-effective method of analyzing very large volumes of data in next to no time and also reduces the complexity of the IT landscape.

6 The existing authorizations in SAP BW were applied to the new dashboards so that users see only the data that is relevant for them. The SCM dashboards were particularly challenging in that they not only had to handle extremely high data volumes for material stocks but also had to replace the existing complex reports in Excel. Dashboards provides the flexibility that is required to perform further calculations with the data before it is displayed in the charts. Project Experience and Success Factors During the course of the project, it soon became apparent that the integration of Dashboards with SAP BW is well engineered. For example, an additional Business- Objects Enterprise Server is not required to develop and execute the dashboards. The developed objects can be integrated in the existing SAP BW transport system and thereby facilitate the standard level of quality assurance in the development phase. Data quality was analyzed and significantly improved in a series of parallel projects. Whenever data is highly aggregated in central control dashboards, the quality of the underlying data is particularly important for acceptance of the application. Further sources of error were identified while the existing Excel reporting solution was being analyzed. With currency translations, for example, different exchange rates were used and missing data was supplemented by various assumptions.

7 Timescale The dashboards were implemented within six months and successfully went live. The project has been so successful that the solution has already been presented at many SAP events in the Nordic region. Looking to the Future The project has already been extended to include an additional phase. Based on the group package created, further dashboards will be implemented that will provide more sophisticated navigation options and a deeper insight into the data. Additional areas - particularly in SCM - will be integrated into the new, successful solution. Benefits of cbs There were three main arguments for managing a project of this nature with cbs. cbs was able to combine the different requirements of the user departments in one sustainable, technical concept. During the course of the project, it became evident that this interface function between business requirements and technical feasibility made a significant contribution to the overall success of the project. In-depth technical knowledge of SAP BW, SAP Dashboards, and ultimately of their integration is essential. Only by combining the know-how of both products could sound technical decisions be taken with regard to their implementation. The result was a high-performance, low-maintenance, and stable reporting solution. Finally, the project was supported by a project management team that was extremely familiar with the special features of dashboard projects. In this way, decisions could be obtained at an early stage and lengthy discussions about layout details halted in time. Last but not least, cbs expert knowledge of the Dashboards technology that, together with the reference project at Kemira, led the chemicals company to opt for successful collaboration with the Heidelberg consultants. Benefits High-performance, lowmain-tenance, and stable top management reporting Available worldwide 24 x 7 Faster access to the company s central KPIs One central tool for monthly reporting Monthly reports can be created at the click of a button Greater use and acceptance of SAP BW as a central reporting tool

8 cbs Corporate Business Solutions Unternehmensberatung The Materna Group Management Consultancy Im Breitspiel Heidelberg - Germany T contact@cbs-consulting.com