BW/SEM was positioned by Madiba as a major catalyst for change in a global high-tech organization to:
- improve data quality in transactional systems
- integrate and automate business planning and reporting
- support performance management philosophies
The key was to address the executive reporting requirements first. This way an integrated information framework was created for the organization that impacts the IT strategy, project priorities, configuration decisions and business processes.
It is well known that BW is a robust data warehousing system that can extract data from multiple SAP and non-SAP sources to provide users with an enhanced ability to analyze data. It is also typical for data warehousing implementations to try overcome significant reporting issues in the underlying source systems and to integrate disparate data.
However, on an executive level, decisions are usually not compartmentalized. Distinctions between financial, sales, logistics, demand planning and even HR information disappear and is rather evaluated in a joint manner. The integration of relevant data for executive reporting requires more than merely storing a wide variety of data in a single location. By firstly focusing on the management philosophies and executive decision making processes it is possible to define an integrated information framework for the organization.
A unique and very powerful opportunity arises by positioning BW as the vehicle to deliver executive reporting within this framework. When executives can access the latest data easily on-line data quality and data availability immediately becomes a concern. Since executives can now view the BW data directly without any manual intervention suddenly flaws in the configuration of the transaction systems, inappropriate postings and development shortcuts became visible and affected each executive’s ability to access the appropriate data directly.
The integrated reporting framework for the organization (in conjunction with BW’s reporting capabilities) was used to drive changes through all the layers in the organization and even down to the transaction system. This included activating additional functionality in SAP, revisiting original configuration decisions, standardizing transaction processing, adopting SAP best practices, migrating systems into SAP and automating data capturing via BPS, etc. As opposed to trying to fix data shortcomings in the data warehouse, Madiba used the data warehouse to improve data quality and to help drive IT improvement initiatives.
