Customer Solution Case Study
/ / BBH Ukraine Implements a New Enterprise Reporting System and Data Storage
Overview
Country or Region: Ukraine
Industry: Food Industry/Beer and Non-Alcoholic Beverages
Customer Profile
Baltic Beverages Holding (BBH) Ukraine owns three breweries, which are the largest in the Baltic region and in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Business Situation
Previously used methods of generating analytical reports for top management and business users couldn’t always provide timely and responsible decision making, including strategic decisions.
Solution
Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 gives BBH Ukraine a common reporting system and database for enterprise reporting, which optimizes the company’s business processes and minimizes paperwork.
Benefits
n Consolidated reports
n Automatic update
n Data mining
n Personalized set of reports
n Online reporting / "There’s no need for programmers for report generation any more. It can easily be achieved by a database administrator and sometimes by managers themselves."
Peter Kozlov, Project Manager, IT Department, BBH Ukraine
Baltic Beverages Holding (BBH) Ukraine operates in the highly competitive market of beer and non-alcoholic beverages. As a result, its employees need to generate and use a wide variety of reports. Not long ago, reporting was considered a quite complicated task, solved not only by the means of the company itself, but also with the help of outside parties. After the implementation of a enterprise data storage and integrated reporting system based on Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005, BBH Ukraine has managed to reduce report-generating terms at least by five times, increase the flexibility of reports, and bring operational and strategic planning of production and business activities to a dramatically new level.
Situation
To track its activities, Baltic Beverages Holding (BBH) Ukraine uses several enterprise informational systems including Monolith accounting system. Until recently the company didn’t have common data storage or an information analysis system. Required reports were generated by different programs, such as the Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet software, OLAP-MS 2000, and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 Reporting Services. Over time, the company accumulated a great deal of reports, many of which (particularly sales reports in terms of money and decalitres) required separate procedures of discharging from the accounting system.
One of the key issues complicating the reporting process belonged to the human element, because manual operations always represent a potential source of errors when generating reports. To compose a correct requirement specification for the report, an analyst had to be an advanced user of all the informational systems used by the company, the number of which was constantly increasing.
The situation was further complicated by the fact that generation of reports by putting together heterogeneous data didn’t fall under responsibility of BBH Ukraine IT staff. That task was delegated to Sigel, a third-party outsourced company. According to results of research, the development of an average report took about a week. What’s worse, applying changes to references or other components of the accounting system made it impossible to obtain analytical data for previous periods.
BBH Ukraine’s IT specialists recognized that previously used methods of generating analytical reports for top management and business users couldn’t always make for timely and responsible decision making, including strategic decisions. That’s why the IT department was given a task to create a common reporting system that could optimize business processes and eliminate manual and paperwork processes. In addition, BBH sought to build a methodological database for enterprise reporting.
Solution
Some alternatives were discussed as a environment for BBH’s analytical system, including IBM AlphaBlox production system. Using Java as a development environment was recognized as its main drawback. As Peter Kozlov, Project Manager of BBH Ukraine IT Department says, “The IBM solution has…problems concerning integration with the Microsoft software that is widely used by the company. Because integration with enterprise informational systems is the bottleneck of such projects, the idea of using AlphaBlox appeared to be impractical.”
During the project implementation, BBH Ukraine IT staff became aware that the set of functions the company required was supported by Microsoft SQL Server 2005, which is part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server system. A decision to choose SQL Server 2005 was made according to the concept of early adoption—or, using a product that hadn’t yet been officially released. As a result, BBH Ukraine became the first company in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to begin using a SQL Server 2005 solution in an industrial context.
Implementing the system involved IT staff from BBH Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian departments of Microsoft Services, and Sigel. Sigel acted as a developer of the reporting forms needed by customers. Altogether 16 statistical reports and more than 10 OLAP cubes were created in the context of the project.
Despite the lack of experience in CIS countries and a large project involving a good deal of data, implementation of SQL Server 2005 was completed in only five months.
Kozlov stresses that quick implementation was possible because of clearly defined goals and a high level of expertise on behalf of Microsoft, BBH Ukraine, and Sigel employees. Implementation of the solution started with the auditing of company’s business processes, analysis of sources and consumers of reports, and building the complete list of business schemes that had to be reflected in the reporting system.
During its implementation, SQL Server 2005 was integrated with other Microsoft software, particularly Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 and Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2002, both of which are also part of Windows Server System.
Benefits
With the advent of enterprise reporting system based on Microsoft SQL Server 2005, BBH Ukraine immediately managed to solve issues with several business processes, including those that were apparent before implementation and those that appeared during implementation.
Automatic Updating
Information used for reporting became consolidated and is automatically updating now. There’s no more need to gather it manually; moreover, it’s stored on a common server.
Data Mining
Data storage has a potential ability to create consolidated reports used for data mining.
Rollback
The new solution makes it possible to obtain reports for previous periods (rollback). Even if data from source systems is erased, it can be analyzed by means of accumulated storage information.
Reduction of Data Transfer Channels Overload
Data from different informational systems is automatically collected into common data storage at night, which substantially reduces overload of data transfer channels.
Personalized Set of Reports Available Online
Every portal user gets a separate Web page with a personalized set of reports according to his job and responsibilities. Employees can work with their reports at home or remotely. The same ability is given to BBH Ukraine partners (e.g. distributors).
E-mail Reports
Company employees can automatically get regular reports—for example, morning summaries with sales results for a day before—by e-mail.
Faster Reporting
The main achievement of the project is the significant decrease in time expenditure. Now the creation of any report takes just one day. As a result, company analysts spend 80 percent of their working time studying reports, rather than searching and gathering data to generate those reports.
Enterprise Analytical System Development Plans
BBH Ukraine’s IT department has several short-term goals:
n Complete the implementation of balanced indicators analysis system. This method permits evaluation of a wide variety of enterprise performance indicators and reporting of business activities. As a result, BBH Ukraine top managers can always have exact information about the company’s operation without spending time on studying dispersed reports.
n Develop personal Web pages for company employees and incorporation of employee profiles. With personal Web pages, the IT department can minimize costs related to providing access to reports needed by an employee according to job role. As an additional result, the number of routine activities will be significantly reduced.
n Build new reports on different lines of company activity (including data from new informational systems) and optimize the structure of stored data to increase performance.
n Study data mining possibilities to analyze historical information on the company’s activity.
Kozlov says, “There’s no need for programmers for report generation any more. It can easily be achieved by a database administrator and sometimes by managers themselves.”
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System is a comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable server infrastructure that helps reduce the complexity and costs of building, deploying, connecting, and operating agile business solutions. Windows Server System helps customers create new value for their business through the strategic use of their IT assets. With the Windows Server™ operating system as its foundation, Windows Server System delivers dependable infrastructure for data management and analysis; enterprise integration; customer, partner, and employee portals; business process automation; communications and collaboration; and core IT operations including security, deployment, and systems management.
For more information about
Windows Server System, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem