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Chloride Power Electronics - Reporting Across the Enterprise
Chloride Power Electronics, has since 1891, provided power protection
systems worldwide, often in highly sensitive fields such as banks,
hospitals and telecommunications where power failure could have
very serious consequences. Chloride is the only British manufacturer
of such systems in Europe's top three.
Scenario
The business uses a Simpson Associates Business Intelligence application
on top if its main line of business application, Geac System21.
The application has been introduced in nine sites in UK, France,
Italy, Spain, the USA and Thailand.
The Business Intelligence application is used to help Chloride
Power personnel analyse information on screen and print in finance,
sales and marketing, service and manufacturing
The Proof
Simpson Associates identified the business requirements, developed
the Business Intelligence application, deployed a core solution
throughout the nine sites and trained the users in the reporting
tools and the application.
Chloride Power used Simpson Associates' methodology to identify
its requirements. A series of workshops identified the initial needs
followed by an iterative process of adjustment and improvement.
This ensured that the business users were able to specify additional
functionality as the business became more familiar with the power
of the reporting tools in the context of the Chloride business.
Simpson Associates used the award winning Cognos reporting tools
PowerPlay and Impromptu to deliver the business intelligence application.
Individually these tools are best of breed for analytical reporting
(PowerPlay) and query reporting (Impromptu). Together they provide
a unique ability for business users to make better decisions every
day
The core development project was co-ordinated by Simpson Associates
to ensure that a standard application could be deployed across the
group, keeping costs of development to a minimum, whilst enabling
local autonomous business units to obtain the maximum advantage
by recognising their individual requirements.
Business benefits were delivered through the timely reporting of
key business indicators. These included gross margin by customer
and by product, on time delivery of products and services by customer
and by contract, order backlog by period and by business unit, average
buying price and lead time by supplier, overdue receivables by customer
and geography and slow moving stock by product and by business unit.
In all over 50 key performance indicators delivered daily to local
and group management enabling them to track business performance
and improve levels of customer service.
Deployment of the Business Intelligence solution required Simpson
Associates to work with Chloride business units around the world
using their experienced consultants to take responsibility for delivering
the application alongside the implementation of Geac System 21.
The deployment included implementation of the application, configuration
to local reporting requirements, quality assuring the data integrity,
training the users and helping them to obtain maximum business benefits.
"This is not just raw data but valuable management information
which we need to keep ahead of the field."
"What is remarkable about Simpson Associates is that, first
and foremost, they understand about business in general and were
very quick to pick up the essential points about our business in
particular. They have a sound grasp of commercial realities and
obviously know a great deal about BI applications. In particular,
they were very knowledgeable about their own application software
and Cognos BI software".
"On top of that, though, their consultants are mature enough
to know how to handle in-house people who have different levels
of technical experience or buy-in to the project. That sensitivity
of approach was as valuable an asset to us during the project as
their undoubted technical expertise."
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