1. Prepared by: Celeste Ng Tuesday, Apr, 2010
Case 6 - Hillman Group, Avnet, and Quaker Chemical: Process Transformation Through Business Intelligence Deployments
Prepared by: Celeste Ng
Tuesday, Apr, 2010
2010/2/22
© 2010 Celeste S-P Ng

2. Lessons learnt
Business intelligence deployment can be divided into two levels
Level-1: Provide informed information and decision
Use BI for reporting and as a decision support tool
Level-2: Provide insights for business processes transformation
Use BI to identify flawed business processes
2010/4/22
© 2010 Celeste S-P Ng

3. Requirements for BI’s level-2 deployment (i.e. its success factors)
Organization-wide information sharing
Choose the right business process to adopt the BI
Fully understand all the activities in the business process
Standardize the business process across the company
Understand how information and data flow across various business processes, and how people use it
The people are flexible enough to change their work practices
2010/4/22
© 2010 Celeste S-P Ng

4. Examples of BI’s Level-2 deployment (1)
Avnet Company ( )
Use BI to identify best business practices and work practices (e.g. alert customers if a product they have purchased in the past is about to be discounted), and
Its sales team is so flexible to take information from BI reports and change the flawed business process
2010/4/22
© 2010 Celeste S-P Ng

5. Examples of BI’s Level-2 deployment (2)
Quaker Chemical
Use BI to completely change the way it manages account receivables
Understand the details of overdue balances, amount of time to collect payment from a customer on a given invoice, number of times a customer paid part, which customers were consistently paying late, and which customers were not paying at all
Proactively identify which customers were at risk for not paying in full,
Make the salespeople to play a larger and more formal role in the overdue balances collection business process
2010/4/22
© 2010 Celeste S-P Ng