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

Priority People / Skills Tool

How we’ve learned to think about it

Different levels of a BI solutionDifferent priorities,

people/skills, tools

Data integrity

Meaningful Data

Data augmentation

Pixel perfect functionality

Ease of useFlexibility

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

Priority People / Skills Tool

Data integrity

Meaningful Data

Data augmentation

Pixel perfect functionality

Ease of useFlexibility

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

Priority People / Skills Tool

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 1st

• 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?