ReportNet and SAP-BW Implementation at Mold-Masters Val Swift IT Manager

Mold-Masters, SAP-BW and ReportNet Who is Mold-Masters Mold-Masters and SAP Our BI initiative First Phases BW / ReportNet projects What we’ve learned

Who is Mold-Masters? Hot Runner industry leader –Headquartered in Georgetown, Canada –Offices worldwide and over 1000 employees. –customers in over 40 countries –manufacturing facilities in Germany, Japan, the United States, Canada, Brazil and Singapore. –Products and technologies covered by more than 1,600 granted and pending international patents - double the number held by all competitors combined “Entrepreneur” evolved to “Corporate”

Mold-Masters and SAP SAP R/3 since 1999 –SD, FI, COPA, MM, PP, HR –Over past 5 years, implemented in US, Germany, UK, implementing China Very successful SAP implementation –Business focused –Team of key resources from the business areas SAP reference site –Consider SAP solution first SAP BW since March 2004 –Small, multi-roled team

Mold-Masters and BI Existing Reporting / Business Intelligence SAP-centric Owned by SAP technical / business analysts –Finance –Sales & Distribution –Manufacturing Other additional data sources –Pivotal Relationship CRM (SQL) –Executive EIS (Access) –Other data sources too

Goals for BI project Off load SAP/R3 processing Turn our rich data into rich information Cut out the middleman Off load SAP technical / business analyst staff –Decentralized reporting Easily get flexible, meaningful reporting into the users hands

The BI Project so far December 2003 –POC for SAP-BW January 2004 –POC for ReportNet January through March 2004 –SAP-BW implementation, EIS and Sales scoping March 2004 –ReportNet EIS implemented April – July 2004 –SAP-BW Sales implementation July – Sept 2004 –ReportNet Sales implementation and rollout

SAP-BW POC (Dec 2003) Concept to be proven: Is there a reason NOT to use SAP-BW? Structure of the POC: 2 SAP-BW consultants

SAP-BW POC (Dec 2003) What we found SAP-BW is our best data warehouse solution Areas requiring enhanced solution –Reporting environment –Ad hoc query environment –Toolset for non-IT / non-power user –Integration of non-SAP data sources

ReportNet POC (Jan 2004) Why “Prove” the ReportNet “Concept”? Looked at market leaders (Gartner etc) Best commitment to SAP-BW support Cognos eager and prepared with SAP-BW related information Licensing model scalable Client – Truly web vs truly web Usability and features – for IT and for end users

ReportNet POC (Jan 2004) Concept to be proven: Does ReportNet do what it says it can? Structure of the POC 4 days Connection to SAP-BW in 10 minutes Consultants weren’t SAP-BW In our experience, no other add-on to SAP has ever been as painless

ReportNet POC (Jan 2004) What we found SAP-BW integration –Security, multi-language, hierarchies and data structures Multiple data sources in single report Tools to empower non-IT users Value added –Enterprise reporting solution –Report distribution options

BI in Production Project Phases Phase 1 –Executive Information System Phase 2 –Sales Reporting Future phases –Finance, Manufacturing, Human Resources, Quality

Phase 1 – EIS Audience: –Senior Management (Sales, HR, Finance, Manufacturing) Deliverables –Replace Access front end with ReportNet front end –Data combination of Access and SAP-BW –EIS to evolve with SAP-BW implementation Status –Completed March 2004

Phase 2 – Sales Reporting Audience –10 sales management and analysts –20 US sales team –International agent and key customer network Deliverables –Eliminate report production time –Streamline distribution to mobile sales force –Flexible analysis – eliminate reliance on SAP IT group Status –Rolled out to sales management Aug 2004 –Being rolled out to salespeople

Data Enhanced Model Refined Data Formatted Reports Ad hoc Query PriorityPeople / SkillsTool How we’ve learned to think about it Different levels of a BI solution Different priorities, people/skills, tools

Data integrity Meaningful Data Data augmentation Pixel perfect functionality Ease of use Flexibility Data Enhanced Model Refined Data Formatted Reports Ad hoc Query Sys Admins Business savvy semi-techies Data savvy techies Creative GUI Designers Business Decision makers SAP-BW Cube Framework Manager SAP-BW Bex Report Studio Query Studio PriorityPeople / SkillsTool

Data integrity Meaningful Data Data augmentation Pixel perfect functionality Ease of use Flexibility Sys Admins Data savvy techies Creative GUI Designers Business Decision makers SAP-BW Cognos ReportNet Data Enhanced Model Refined Data Formatted Reports Ad hoc Query Business savvy semi-techies SAP-BW Cube Framework Manager SAP-BW Bex Report Studio Query Studio PriorityPeople / SkillsTool

The Biggest Challenge SAP-BW / ReportNet expertise –2 ‘new’ products –‘Best Practices’ being developed The good news –Yet to come up with a showstopper –Knowledge by support organization of SAP-BW environment growing –Cognos has responded quickly with hot fixes etc

Our overall experience ReportNet preserves SAP-BW technical information, but shields the user from it Get more out of our investment in SAP-BW by getting the data directly into the hands of business users Allows the value of the SAP-BW data shine through the necessary technical requirements

Our overall experience Our fiscal year starts Oct 1 st Our sales team will start the year with all the sales information they need We would not have been able to do this without ReportNet

Questions?