Bridge IT Systems To Better Manage Business Mergers

By Jerome Prescott

A merger of two aggressive manufacturers in the United States and Canada formed a company that brought unique value to the agricultural, construction, materials handling and transportation industries.

This new multinational company had undergone mergers and acquisitions in the past and had several different IT systems. There were looking for ways to enable access to consolidated information to better serve customers across the globe.

Further compounding the problem was a disparity in business models of the merged entities. Dealing with multiple systems was causing confusion and tremendous overhead on their employees. Not to mention the reduction in quality of service provided to their customers.

To the Rescue - A BI Bridge and Gasket Solution

It was determined that datacubes could be developed to combine data from the different systems, including Excel, that would allow users to create overlays of data for a consolidated view of profits and sales across business units. We refer to this as a Bridge.

Not only did this approach accelerate their ability to analyze important information, it also reduced the current IT report backlog. Users were empowered to mine the information to meet their own reporting requirements (the 'gasket').

Poor Forecasting and the China Syndrome

A manager in the call center overheard an agent taking an order and discounting the price of a popular item. On a hunch, he ran a query against one of the datacubes and found that this happened quite frequently. Customers ordering online always paid the full price, so a decision was made to minimize the discounts on certain items. This simple change reduced the volume of incoming calls as more customers ordered online while improving margins in the call center.

Poor Forecasting and the China Syndrome

In the past, sales were forecast based on key attributes including customer group, geographies, product classes, and related criteria. Over time the accuracy of the forecasts was steadily decreasing as more and more products were sourced overseas, particularly China.

As more and more products were sourced overseas, the purchasing options for end customers increased. Often there were similar products offered by Chinese suppliers that were only slightly different from similar products sourced in North America.

While this supplier substitution delivered a new competitive price and quality combination, it created havoc with customer forecasts effectively reversing the business model from customer driven to product driven. Forecasts became useless over time.

A unique approach was adapted to their growing problem of dealing with product driven business models and forecasts. Yet another way a perspective-driven business intelligence approach increases margins and drives profits for companies in aggressive industries.

About the Author:

Discover how focused business intelligence for mergers and acquisitions will bridge disparate data and help you better manage multiple business models. Our BI Road Map Accelerator offers a try before you buy option for immediate, low-risk business value.

Why Mid-market Customers Struggle To Implement SAP

By Jerome Prescott

With six million dollars already invested, this commercial property company was being more than reasonable. Their SAP implementation had stalled in the blueprint phase due to a business requirement specific to their industry.

SAP was asked to review the design, and they came back with a recommendation that was supported by several members of the team. But the consulting firm leading the project had been following a rigid implementation road map and were unwilling to concede and change their approach.

The mentality of most integrators is to stick to a tried-and-true methodology. But this can also lead to trouble. Predefined work plans tend to promote a 'best practices' mentality. Consultants configure the system based on what they've done in the past, and then the customer adapts to standard processes.

Property Management is a relatively new vertical market for SAP and customers are still learning how to configure the system to best facilitate the functionality and reporting mechanisms.

The proposed design required frequent changes to the organization structure as buildings were acquired and sold. This complicated the setup process somewhat, but the downstream processes and reporting features required less work to configure.

When this new approach was accepted, a new team was assembled. Immediately, we went about developing a flexible work plan around Conference Room Pilot (CRP) phases. An MDM expert was also brought on to develop a data governance policy and integrate master data management processes with organization structure changes within SAP.

The new approach worked as expected. Following the old plan, users were unclear on whether the proposed design would work and felt uncomfortable with the process. But now they were responsible for leading the CRP sessions and were able to see the impact of their design decisions first-hand.

Within a few weeks, all the teams were aligned to the new work plan and a simple set of metrics were defined to measure progress against deliverables in support of the CRP phases.

About the Author:

If you are facing a stalled or failed IT project, give us a call. A comprehensive IT project assessment can be conducted in a day or two. You'll then have the insight and strategy to correct the problems and get back on track. Also check out our Business Intelligence for the Mid-market try before you buy, low risk service.