Unilever is a large, multinational consumer products company with 400 brands spanning 14 categories of home, personal care and foods products. The U.S. Supply Chain organization, based in Trumbull, CT, is responsible for the timely delivery of Unilever’s products to its customers.
The Challenge:
The Supply Chain’s operational reporting was owned by the business team and reporting was based on a variety of reporting technologies that were not IT compliant, including Excel, Microsoft Access, Visual Basic applications, hundreds of stored procedures and manual data manipulation. Reports were distributed manually as Excel worksheets. Archived reports grew stale as new data came in, but there was no way to update them. In their dynamic business environment, making report changes was a very labor-intensive activity. There was no ad hoc reporting capability.
The Solution:
The new BI structure, built on top of Unilever’s SAP BW environment, is an integrated environment that contains a Microsoft SQL relational database, Microsoft Integration Services (SSIS) for data integration, Microsoft Analysis Services (SSAS) OLAP cubes, and a web-based SSRS reporting application. Saama designed and developed a central data warehouse, adding financial data to the supply chain information. OLAP cubes insure good report performance. The web-based application was designed to mimic the old reports – to make the transition easier – but provide more flexibility and additional features. Saama developed SSRS live and snapshot (as-of) reports, scorecards, and ProClarity views for ad hoc analysis as part of the engagement.
The Benefits:
The new supply chain reports are deployed and used widely, with about 2000 total users and 200-300 frequent users. The central data warehouse is scalable and facilitates making changes. Less IT maintenance is required because of the zero-footprint reporting application. Reports are distributed automatically. Ad hoc reporting is available in addition to the ability to run existing reports against up-to-date data.
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