Agile Corporate Management

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Agile

Corporate ManagementPerformance management using process-orientedplanning and analysis with BOARD

> Research Note - October 2009

An analysis made by

www.wolfgang-martin-team.net

2009 S.A.R.L. Martin,

6 rue Paul Guiton,

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Wolfgang Martin Team

2009 S.A.R.L. Martin all rights reserved2

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Content

1 AGILECORPORATEMANAGEMENT.............................................

1.1 Agility more than operational excellence......................................................

1.2 Performance management information in the context of

business processes...............................................................................................

1.3 Performance management living it at every work station..............................

2 ACASEFORBOARD........................................................................

2.1 Supply Chain Management at Kraft Foods.........................................................

2.2 HanseMerkur: Discovering and reducing risks with BOARD..............................

2.3 Flexible analysis and planning at ABB AG with BOARD......................................

2.4 Harvey Nichols: Retailer realises benets of Integrated, Business Wide

Management Information ...................................................................................

3 BOARDPROCESS-ORIENTEDPLANNINGANDANALYSIS....

4 APPENDIX .........................................................................................


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1 Agilecorporatemanagement

1.1 Agilitymorethanoperational

excellence

When turnover grows more slowly or even stagnatesand declines, when budgets become increasingly

tight and competitive pressure continues to grow,

management is challenged more than ever. Identifying

prot opportunities, implementing rigorous cost saving,

intensifying customer contacts and effectively using the

few means and resources still available are absolutely

top priority. Geopolitical uncertainties make planning

even more difcult, but at the same time more important

than ever. In addition there are the ever increasing new

regulations, in areas such as nancial reporting and

balance sheet consolidation. In other words: traditionalcorporate management is reaching its limits. The old,

but still correct principles ofoperationalexcellence

no longer sufce.

Corporate management in times of a worldwide

economic crisis and especially in the approaching post-

crisis period requires additional agility that is needed

over and above the traditional corporate goals of

effectiveness and efciency. Agility means the ability

of an organization to be constantly innovative and to

adjust its own business models and processes to suit

market and customer dynamics. It all depends on the

companys ability to act rapidly and correctly in times of

ux and uncertainty. Because the life cycle of processes

is getting shorter and shorter, changes in increasingly

faster cycles are necessary.1 Corporate management

today and tomorrow must be agile in order for a company

to not only survive, but to prosper.

Agile corporate management is therefore based

not only on the traditional instruments of business

management (planning, execution, monitoring and

controlling), it also encompasses three additionalcomponents: governance, risk management and

compliance. Governance refers to the organization

and control of activities and resources in the company

in a manner that is responsible, sustainable and in line

with adding value in the long run. Riskmanagement

applies to all activities concerning risk identication,

risk reduction and risk prevention. Compliance means

fullling the policies made by management as well as

the legal and regulatory requirements. To meet these

requirements, agile corporate management needs a

performance management system. (Fig. 1)

Performance Management is a business model

that allows a company to continuously align

corporate goals with business processes and keep

them consistent. Performance management means

planning, monitoring and controlling processes in

a way that they are agile as well as using process

content as the basis for diagnostics, analysis and

forecasts.

The principle is therefore:We can only manage whatwe can measure.

1For the denition of agility see http://dictionary.bnet.com/denition/agility.html


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1.2 Performancemanagementinformation inthecontextofbusinessprocesses

In extensive business intelligence projects in previous

years companies have worked on making information

available to support a system of corporate management

that is based on facts. However, in many cases

experience has shown that while information is often

available, it has not been placed in the context of the

businesses proceses and has therefore been of only

limited use to corporate management. In order to

increase the benets of BI and to enable agile corporatemanagement, new ground must be broken:

Figure 1: An agile company not only relies on operational excellence, but also on the exibility of the business model. One pre-

requisite is the existence of agile business processes that also allow agility to be implemented operationally. The performance

management model, using processes that are planned, monitored and controlled, is also used to initiate proactive measures.

It is here that business intelligence meets business process management: information is placed in the context of business

processes, and business processes thus become intelligent processes. This creates agile corporate management.

Using BOARD enables us to detect weaknesses in

a product range or sales process early and promptly

introduce countermeasures. Because our employees

were fully involved in the project and the develop-

ment of the applications for which no programming

was required - from the very beginning, we will now

be able to react quickly and accurately to new market

situations in the future as well.

Dr. Klaus Doch

Commercial & IT Director

Fissler GmbH


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which are a prerequisite for risk management and

compliance, and therefore also for agile corporate

management. (Fig. 2)

If a company wants to implement the principles of agile

corporate management, this cannot be done without

the relevant software support. In particular, over recent

years CPM toolkits have proven themselves in this

area (CPM = Corporate Performance Management) and

are regarded as best practice for implementation. They

are positioned between CPM suites and individual tools

(such as spreadsheet programs).

They offer functionalities specific to performancemanagement as a service; hence, they are open and

have standardised interfaces. As a result they can be

The goal of performance management is to place

information in the context of business processes.

Agility fully depends on those business processes.(see Fig. 2)

Information that relates to business processes, is

used to proactively monitor and control. Employees

should be able to follow these processes in a way that

they can understand. Like that, process owners and

managers are able to comprehend the current position

and situation of every process and take actions promptly

when problems and risks emerge.

They can therefore also recognize sooner whethergoals that have been set for an ongoing process can

be attained at all: this creates early warning systems,

Figure 2: Performance management is a top-down model for information-based management. Measurable goals are derived

from the business strategy. Based on strategy and goals, processes and metrics for efcient business management and con-tinuous optimization are derived in parallel. Based on the outcomes of the metrics, decisions are made either manually by

a person or automatically via decision engines. The decisions lead to actions for controlling the performance of processes

and the activities within them (tactical and operational CPM) and also for aligning and modifying strategy and goals (strategic

CPM): The loop is closed. It is important that measurement and process execution are synchronized: the speed of measuring

and controlling must correspond to the speed of the business process.


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modied very easily to suit individual subject-specic

tasks within the company and can be integrated easily

into existing IT landscapes. Taken as a whole this

provides the exible work environment within business

departments that is required for agile corporate

management.

One interesting European provider of innovative CPM

toolkits is BOARD. The CPM toolkit from BOARD

offers process-oriented planning and analysis as the

foundation for agile corporate management. The

traditional business intelligence tools are combined

with the services of a CPM toolkit to create performance

management. Performance management is based

on process-oriented analysis and planning for ad hoc

and standard evaluations, scorecards and dashboards,

key data and metrics, and for parallel access to the data

warehouse, to data marts, to operational internal data

or a range of external data including data from the web.

Through performance management the output

and performance of business processes is made

measurable so that it can be monitored and

controlled. In day-to-day business, processes must

continuously be modied to suit the speed of market

and the requirements of customers. This requireswell-engineered simulation methods and tools as well

as a high degree of transparency for example through

version control in planning. Usually we need to be able

to plan using a combination of online and ofine tools,

and consistency must of course be guaranteed.

A CPM toolkit such as the one from BOARD provides all

of that. Furthermore, BOARD offers additional functions

which clearly set BOARD apart from its competitors.

Many suppliers limit the planning function to nancial

planning. BOARD goes further and offers planning for alldepartments and all processes. Standard planning pro-

cesses are also supplied and facilitate a rapid and safe

Berlucchi has grown considerably in recent years,

hence the need to install a system for the integra-

ted management of our commercial and operational

processes. With BOARD, we have developed a model

that seamlessly integrates our commercial planning

activities with performance control and management

of the sales force.

Roberto SciolliCFO

Berlucchi S.p.A.

entry into the world of BOARD. BOARDs special feature

is a date cube combined with a text cube, both of

which complement the classic data cube in the BOARD

OLAP tool.

The date cube enables full calendar functionality

to enrich the planning processes. This allowscomprehensive process management for planning

processes BOARD customers also use the CPM toolkit

for project planning and supply chain management.

The text cube provides a good level of support for

the collaborative aspects of planning and analysis by

enabling comments and additional information and

even images and pictures.

BOARD relies on a multi-cube architecture using a data

owengine. By assigning indicators to single cubes,

a high degree of exibility is attained when calculating

indicators and compounds and conguring complex

applications. This allows the underlying data marts to

be laid out in a lean way.

Here, BOARD makes use of its technological strength to

combine high-performance data management with an

innovative, highly ergonomic front-end to deliver a CPM

toolkit. The integration of data management and front-

end provides an additional advantage. With BOARD all of

the analytical objects are linked. As a result the analysis

becomes intuitive, fast and safe due to a seamless zoom

and drill through/across/down/anywhere function,

even in the pre-processing systems.

1.3 Performancemanagementlivingitat

everyworkstation

Performance management appeals not only to

business analysts, but also to occasional users within

the company and even to external employees of

dealers, suppliers, partners or to customers. Ultimately,performance management for internal and external

employees and managers should not only be used as

a matter of course, it should also inspire and motivate.

The user need to embrace performance management

and use it on an every-day basis to experience a lasting

benet.

The success factors for users are not only good response

times and good support even when there are very large

numbers of workstations, but also the ergonomics

of the IT support. Due to their service character, CPMtoolkits such as the one from BOARD work like Lego

blocks with functions displayed within one click on the


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using principles of mashing up planning and analysis

services as la Web 2.0 if desired. This is a mode of

operation appreciated by younger employees (the so-

called digital natives) in particular.

right button of the mouse. This also enables occasional

users of performance management to work rather

autonomously by selecting objects using drag-and-drop

and entering the relevant characteristics.

In this respect CPM toolkits address the old BI

requirement of more autonomy in the business

departments. While traditional CPM suites cover only

specic requirements within one business area using a

special model, a CPM toolkit is an open but functionally

interrelated environment in which all of the objects

and functions are available to the user in the formof services. This empowers the user to compose and

orchestrate exactly what is needed without the need for

programming.

This is a basic prerequisite for the required agility, be-

cause the one-product concept from BOARD prevents

the need for complex and time-consuming work with

different development environments, databases and

interfaces.

Furthermore, due to its internal service orientedarchitecture, with BOARD you can for example work

Figure 3: Due to its internal service oriented architecture, BOARD allows you to work using principles of mashing up planning

and analysis services la Web 2.0, and services such as Google Maps can easily be embedded.

The more people use BOARD, the more they want

from it and BOARD has provided us with the exibility,

capability and speed to support this change across

the business.

John Quickenden,Business Support Group Manager

Mitsubishi Electric


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Technology:BOARD is completely integrated with Microsoft Ofce 2007 allowing a rapid and easy entry into

BOARDs mode of operation as people work with it in the same way as with Ofce 2007. BOARD is based

on service oriented architecture (SOA) and uses the Microsoft .NET framework as a foundation. It is a future-

oriented architecture which thus not only offers a good protection of investment, but also makes planning and

analysis more productive: a complete planning or analysis process can also be used as a partial process in other

planning processes and can even reuse other partial processes itself. Furthermore, layout templates ensure thatchanges are carried out reliably end-to-end and that they remain consistent.

BOARDs multi-dimensional database is based on 64-bit technology and thus performs well even with very large

volumes of data. BOARD can directly access other relational databases and can be seamlessly set up with

industry standards such as SAP and SAP BW. Finally, BOARD allows rapid deployment of the nal results through

ready-to-print, high-resolution graphics, a not to be neglected feature when it comes to professional publication

of the output of planning and analytics.

Summary:Companies who want to build an enduring, reliable, revision-proof and agile system of corporate

management must choose which platform and which components they need in order to implement a solution

of this kind. One of the important issues and tasks is selecting a technology for process-oriented planning

and analysis that suits the individual company needs and which will not only be accepted by employees, but

actually also inspires and enlightens them. Crucial here are the right ergonomics, the right price-performance

ratio and quickly implemented, easily adjustable and modiable solutions that meet the needs of agile com-

panies. From an IT point of view this means that the solution is service oriented. Companies which need to

fulll such a task and which use Microsoft technology should therefore consider BOARD as a possible CPM

toolkit solution.


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Company

Kraft Foods Spain. Around the globe, in over 150 countries, more than100,000 employees are committed to bringing the world its favourite

foods with well-known brands like Kraft, Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia,

Milka, Suchard and Toblerone.

Core business is based on ve sectors: snacks, beverages, cheese, sh

products and convenience meals. Krafts superior portfolio includes 61

brands with a revenue of over 24 billion USD.

BOARDSolution

When Krafts Big Clients started to request high level service, a

decrease of logistic and administrative costs, collaboration in projects

about new product and technologies, Kraft Foods decided to set up aSupply Chain department in the early days of 2000.

This new area has been given the responsibility of the goods delivery

process and the following goal: clients should receive precisely the goods

they need, in the best quality condition, at the right time and with the

lowest cost possible. The impact to achieve all this spreads to purchase

process, demand planning and logistics as well as customer service and,

so far, credit management issues.

Due to the complex and large amount of information required, Kraft then

asked for a complete in-depth analysis of the supply chain management

process.

Applying a step-by-step development approach, the SDG consultingteam set up the Management Intelligence project, focused on three

main modules: Customer Service Level, Cost To Serve, Logistics Costs

Budgeting.

- Customer Service Level

For any order a client requests, a series of different processes are imple-

mented right through to the delivery of the order itself. This project mo-

dule aims to provide the Supply Chain department, together with process

owners for order deliveries, with a Consolidated Control System enabling

the key users to monitor the customer service levels at a glance. This

information is available for Supply Chain, Finance, Marketing and Sales

departments as well as third parties such as suppliers and clients.

In order to evaluate delivery process efciency, indicators were dened

according to the dimensions of analysis: packages, orders, delivery notes

and invoices. These elements are actually the starting points used to

evaluate the Service Level itself, enforcing the assessment of the delive-

ry process efciency.

Moreover, identication and analysis of the reasons that really cause

inefciency, was found as one of the key-factors in Consumer Service

Level Monitoring. Carlos Picazo, Costumer Service Manager at Kraft

Foods Spain: If we are able to nd and know where they are, how

frequently and when they take place, we will fully understand the cause-

effect relationships and then gure out a solution. Thats the main driverthat can help us to improve our Delivery System.

2 AcaseforBOARD

2.1 SupplyChainManagementatKraftFoods

Costumerstatement

If we are able to nd and to

know where inefcient delivery

processes are, how frequently

and when they take place, we

will fully understand the cause-

effect relationships and thengure out a solution. That is the

main driver that will denitely

help us to improve our delivery

system.

CarlosPicazo

ConsumerServiceManager

KraftFoods

ApplicationArea

Supply Chain Management


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The next step then is a detailed analysis of the incomplete or not ex-

pected deliveries: Kraft can nally check which products are missing,why they are missing and which clients will be affected by these issues.

Information like that is processed by the Customer Service department,

whose main task is to look for a solution for these types of incidents.

- Cost To Serve

Analysing data at the lowest level of detail - delivery note level - actually

allows Kraft to keep the efciency of their logistic network under control;

they receive complete weekly activity reports, aimed at helping them to

nd new opportunities to improve their day-by-day processes.

The Cost To Serve module controls and optimizes logistic costs for serving

clients, in order to support decision processes identifying inefcienciesand opportunities for economies of scale within Krafts supply chain.

The costs depend mainly on Krafts logistic structure (factories and

warehouse location) and on the delivery conditions requested by each

client (size, packaging, structure and order frequency).

Data - available for any client - can be analysed based on:

Delivery Point

Product

Store of supply & conrmation

% of track use (cargo)

Order size (according to a given scale) Order structure (complete palet or picking)

15 different types of costs are analysed, supporting the following pro-

cesses:

Direct Delivery from factory;

Primary transport (from the factory to the warehouse);

Stocking;

Distribution;

Penalties and agreements.

- Logistics Cost Budgeting

This projects module comes directly from a need to have a business

model that supports the budget process for distribution costs; this

means comparing - in an easy and exible way - actual vs. budget and

performing simulations such as what-if and what-for scenario analysis.

All this can be done based on the standard costs rather than applying

complex models concerning fees and prices for each logistical supplier.

In the meantime, this simulation-based environment enables Krafts

management to carry out the revised budget and monthly forecast

process, enforcing the attitude of the management to act by process -

being oriented to the most important asset of each company: the client.


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2.2 HenseMerkur:DiscoveringandreducingriskswithBOARD

Company

For many years, the strategy adopted by the HanseMerkur Versicher-ungsgruppe has been aimed at achieving long-term strengthening of its

nancial base, something which is of key signicance to customers and

members involved in the insurance of people. It is this sound nancial

base that has allowed HanseMerkur to grow into what is now a modern

insurance group extending right across Germany, employing more than

1500 people, with revenues from policy premiums in excess of 800 mil-

lion EUR and a capital reserve in excess of 3 billion EUR.

BOARDSolution

Due to regulations contained within the German Insurance Supervision

Act and the Stock Companies Act, HanseMerkur is legally obliged to take

appropriate measures towards identifying potentially adverse develop-

ments at an early stage. In particular, it is required to set up an approp-

riate monitoring system or early risk detection system. HanseMerkur has

complied with these legislative obligations to set up a risk management

system (RMS), and has opted for one based on the BPM/CPM toolkit

from BOARD.

At HanseMerkur, a risk is defined in the following way: Negative

variance between the actual development and the planned/anticipated

outcome. The RMS aims to identify all risks to the HanseMerkur Groupin one integrated system across the whole corporation to estimate their

potential implications and to arrange for appropriate measures to be

taken to minimise those risks.

Departmental managers are tasked with ongoing risk identication, risk

description and evaluation, determining the measures to be adopted

within the scope of their dened areas of expertise and to proactively

report those risks. Therefore, the following functions have been set up

in BOARD:

1. Risk detection:In the rst step, the user is provided with a template for entering and

describing a new risk. Then the newly dened risk is assigned to a

category, e.g. political risks, market or nancial market risks for the

affected company, and the responsible and involved employees.

2. Risk administration:

On the basis of to be dened indicators, factors are described which

can have a major bearing on the risk, e.g. rising insurance premium

revenues, decreasing combined ratio. Plan and threshold values are

dened for these indicators. The risks is then evaluated based on their

impacts on damages/losses and probability of occurrence. By multiplyingthe valuations obtained for damage class and probability of occurrence,

ApplicationArea

Risk management

Costumerstatement

The introduction of the RMS has

caused a large innovative leap in

the department.

Dr.MichaelRedlin

CorporatePlanning

HanseMerkur

Versicherungsgruppe


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the expectancy value is calculated automatically and the risk class

(high, medium or low) is determined. Suitable courses of action are thenplanned for all risks.

3. Risk documentation & 4. Risk reporting

After defined periods of time, risks and their related measures are

reviewed. All risks and actions, including their degree of implementation

can be retrieved and viewed in summary form at any time.

Customerbenets

The introduction of the RMS has caused a large innovative leap in

the department. The new system has already given a good return ofinvestment thanks to the improved efciency brought to the department.

However, the most striking benet is the newly acquired transparency

because of the automatically calculated expectancy value for each risk.

It makes it possible at an early stage to estimate the existing risks, and

in so doing helps HanseMerkur to initiate appropriate counteractive

measures on time.

Furthermore, it has been possible to achieve substantial improvements

in the working processes of the Corporate Planning department (CPD).

With the help of BOARD, all risks can now be managed. The CPD is able

to carry out targeted analyses to detect risks and identify their causesand impacts. Consequently, the analyses can be conducted faster and

this opens the door for CPD employees to improve the quality of their

work. Their every day work is in turn supported by the system because

the BI solution allows to generate a large number of signicant reports

like the view on individual risk classes, on the developement of risks in

an annual comparison or an overview of measures.


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Company

ABB AG, based in Mannheim, is a leader in energy and automationtechnology and enables its customers in energy supply and industry to

improve their performance and at the same time reduce environmental

pollution. ABB employs about 108,000 people in more than 100 countries

throughout the world.

BusinessChallenges

An international group such as ABB AG must attend to diverse business

requirements and nd ways to provide company data in a transparent

way, because fast access to well prepared information is the basis for

being able to make accurate decisions.

ABB AG decided some time ago to search for a exible and easy to use BI/

CPM platform in order to support varied business needs and processes

such as Sales Control, Management Reporting and Planning.

In 2005 the division introduced a central Business Intelligence solution

to analyse the data from different systems such as SAP because it did

not have an integrated solution for analysis and planning requirements.

Thus the problem of a growing number of Excel applications and the use

of different software solutions in the various departments was solved

and a central tool was made available. It became clear relatively quickly

that the selected solution could not cope with all the requirements forintegrating analysis, planning and reporting.

Problems such as performance, a low level of user-friendliness and time-

consuming modications were some of the faults that the staff found with

the solution they had then. For example there was no way to transfer and

integrate data from Lotus Notes databases in order to create a central

performance management, indicator and planning system for the whole

division. Finally, it was decided to look for another tool that would be able

to better cope with these requirements.

BOARDSolution

After an exhaustive search the decision was made to go with BOARDs

integrated programming-free Toolkit together with Qurius Advanced

Solutions AG as implementation partner to deliver the solution.

Qurius carried out a prototype within a few days and demonstrated,

amongst other things, how easy it is to access data from source systems

such as SAP and Lotus Notes. The simple, exible reporting and visual

capabilities together with BOARDs integrated workow support were

further arguments for the Toolkit. Other products on the shortlist

could not compare with BOARD because of high costs, insufcient user-

friendliness, complexity and poor integration. says Klaus Ehrenreich,

Commercial Director of the ABB Power Systems Division.

2.3 FlexibleanalysisandplanningatABBAGwithBOARD

Costumerstatement

Other products on the shortlist

could not compare with BOARD

because of high costs, insufci-

ent user-friendliness, complexity

and poor integration.

KlausEhrenreich,

CommercialDirectorofthe

ABBPowerSystemsDivision

Of course, this time we wanted

to be sure that we had opted for

the right tool and looked at many

other manufacturers products.

But in the end only the BOARD

toolkit convinced us.

BerndVieten,

InformationSystems

Managerofthe

ABBPowerSystemsDivision

ApplicationArea

Analysis, Planning and Reporting


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BOARDs Business Partner Qurius implemented the project delivering

a comprehensive reporting and planning solution for ABB GermanysPower Systems Sales. After this acid test was passed, they went to

start producing an SPR, a seamless planning and reporting solution.

The planning application currently being implemented will enable the

business to plan actively on different levels and ultimately provide

reporting for the whole division as well as cost centre planning. In the

future, the management will consider further extending the use of BOARD

for project controlling and sales control.

Compared to the previous procedures based on Excel and other tools

that took up a great deal of time and human resources, BOARD provides

a single integrated platform for the most varied analysis and planningtasks, enabling great savings to be made. Now it no longer takes days to

adapt the application and to change basic conditions but can be done

with few clicks of the mouse.

Before we found out about BOARD, we used various, non-integrated

applications to analyse our planning and nance data. Of course, this

solution could not offer us important features such as user-friendliness

and exibility when making modications. This was criticised by many

users and the solution we had then was hardly accepted at all. Therefore,

we were very excited about the live demonstration of BOARD that we

saw at a presentation. This demo gave us answers to a large number ofour problems in only a few minutes, comments Klaus Ehrenreich. Of

course, this time we wanted to be sure that we had opted for the right tool

and looked at many other manufacturers products. But in the end only

the BOARD toolkit convinced us, explained Bernd Vieten, Information

Systems Manager at ABB AG, Power Systems Division.

The new reporting and planning solution has given the commercial

division management a system that enables them to analyse the relevant

data from many different points of view with just a few clicks of the

mouse. The information gained from this is the basis for quick, reliable

decisions for the active control of the company.


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Company

Founded in 1813, Harvey Nichols is a high fashion retailer, focusing onbranded merchandise, quality food and restaurant offerings. With a staff

of 3000 people, Harvey Nichols is a leading retailer in the UK and Ireland.

TheChallenges

In the fast moving retail environment, consistent, trustworthy and easily

accessible information is key to understanding the needs of both the

customer and the business. Harvey Nichols realised that they needed to

implement a sound framework that would support their requirements as

their growth continued.

It was essential to provide a more harmonised approach to PerformanceManagement, that was more accurate, easier to use and more cost

effective. Martin Schoeld, Retail Operations Director, explains Our

existing reporting wasnt cohesive or reliable and was produced by a

myriad of different tools. Users were not condent in the accuracy or

reliability of the data. BOARD has allowed us to consolidate our information

into a single, integrated solution and displace multiple systems, Hyperion

(Financial Reporting), Business Objects (Sales Reporting and Analytics),

Arthur Planning and a multitude of spreadsheets, giving the users much

more faith in the results.

TheSelectionProcessBOARDs Business Partner Retail Assist was already a trusted supplier of

Harvey Nichols with the Merret supply chain ERP solution. With a pilot,

completed utilizing Merret BI powered by BOARD (an out the box solution

with retail ready reports based on the BOARD solution), the comparison

to the existing platforms was carried out. BOARD was the clear winner.

TheSolution

Previously the myriad of solutions and their disconnected approach led

to a multitude of spreadsheets and different departments constructing

their reports in different ways, thus data consistency was poor and

condence in the information being accurate, was low. The BOARD

solution has allowed Harvey Nichols to eliminate this disconnection by

providing a consistent framework and solid foundations from which to

deliver a wide range Performance Management applications. BOARDs

programming-free approach has allowed users to become self sufcient.

Ad-hoc reporting has become much simpler and quicker and the vastly

improved data integration has installed condence in the accuracy of the

information.

The BOARD process began some 12 months ago and has delivered sig-

nicant improvements to Daily Sales, Stock, Financial Reporting as well

as Cost and Sales Forecasting. The Daily Sales database and reports

were the rst to be built in BOARD replacing Hyperion. Data is loaded atthe lowest level allowing Harvey Nichols to analyse daily information by

2.4 RetailerrealisesbenetsofIntegrated,BusinessWideManagementInformation

Customerstatement

The pilot, replicating the sales

reports produced in Business

Objects was completed in a mat-ter of days, it was clear to us that

BOARD would provide us with the

single integrated environment

that we wanted.

AlistairMcDonald

SeniorBusinessSystems

Manager

HarveyNichols

Data consistency and the provi-

sion of a single version of truthhas encouraged users to delve

deeper into the underlying data.

There is a greater thirst for the

information on which to base

sound decisions, which can only

be healthy for the business.

MartinSchoeld

RetailOperationsDirector

HarveyNichols

ApplicationArea

Reporting/Analytics

Budgeting & Forecasting


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the SKU, till, day, hour, payment type and operator (cashier). Aggregated

data also allows analysis by Style, Colour, Size, Fit, customized productattributes and standard attributes.

The Daily Sales application was rolled out to users across the business

(merchandisers, nance, operations. sales etc) who can use the drill

anywhere functionalities to perform on the y, ad-hoc, root cause analysis,

relieving a massive amount of pressure on IT, saving time and money. The

next step was to replace the weekly sales reporting previously produced

in Business Objects which has also been successfully completed. Cost

and Sales Forecasting has also been implemented, replacing 100s of

spreadsheets. Utilising the workow functionality in BOARD has not only

automated the process but has introduced an element of control notpreviously available to Harvey Nichols. Even those users wedded to

spreadsheets are happy to work with BOARD, thanks to its ease of use.

says McDonald.

BusinessBenets

- System Enhancements

Monday mornings, a critical time in any retail organisation used to see

systems grinding to a halt, purely because of running reports. Thanks to

BOARD this is no longer an issue.

- Data Consistency and easier Ad-Hoc ReportingThe huge pressure put on the IT department by the business to provide

ad-hoc reports/analysis and to answer a barrage of questions about

the accuracy, consistency and usefulness of the data has virtually

disappeared, freeing up time to concentrate on delivering further projects

and enhancements.

- Improved Performance

The biggest single win is highlighted best in improved performance.

Business Objects reports used to take anywhere between 30 60 mi-

nutes to run, however BOARD allows those same reports to be produced

virtually instantaneously. Martin Schoeld comments Users are now

able to have the data that they require at their ngertips, allowing them

to concentrate on the analysis they should be doing, rather than sitting

around waiting for the reports to be produced. The time/cost benet to

the business is signicant and as we discover more ways of utilising

BOARD that can only grow.

- Replacement of Business Objects, Hyperion, Arthur Planning

Martin Schoeld continues The new solution is easier to implement and

easier to use. User requests can be actioned in hours, not days. Our

reporting is now more accurate and, as we have only one licence to pay,

its more cost-effective. With the BOARD BI framework in place, we can

build in enhancements that will support our business expansion.

CustomerstatementWe have now rolled out nanci-

al reporting and sales and stock

reporting across the business,

making Hyperion redundant and

phasing out Business Objects.

We have just completed work

on cost and sales forecasting in

BOARD, which replaces hundreds

of manual spreadsheets, and our

main project on BOARD next year

is to create a WSSI.

MartinSchoeld

RetailOperationsDirector

HarveyNichols


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3 BOARDprocess-oriented

planningandanalysis

BOARD is a young dynamic Swiss company from Ticino.

A global expansion has been successfully underway

for several years. BOARDs customers include leading

global large-scale enterprises and also medium-sizedbusinesses. The BOARD technology2 is Microsoft-

compatible and will also be able to be used in the

Microsoft Cloud in future. By combining business

intelligence (BI) and performance management (PM) in

one single product, BOARD allows the entire decision-

making process to be controlled: from recording

information to analysing it, from setting objectives and

planning to decision-making.

,

BOARDs innovative toolkit approach makes it possible

to create personalised BI and PM solutions without the

need for programming. From simple reporting to complex

performance management application, any number of

analyses and plans can be compiled by simply using the

drag-and-drop function.

Interactivevisualization

A wide range of interactive 2D and 3D diagrams, which

can be congured with the aid of pre-dened layouts,

allows company data to be displayed quickly andparticularly efciently. The possibility to carry out drill-

down procedures directly from the diagram ensures that

the information can be viewed in a particularly intuitive

manner and also facilitates analysis. Graphic animation

of the latest generation such as thumbnails and carousels

in combination with alarms and dynamic cockpits

ensure that information can be displayed in a way that

2Salvatore Capuano is head of the BOARD development team at BOARD Internationalin Lugano (Switzerland). He is a specialist in software architecture and in particular in

Microsoft .NET framework, SOA, Web Services, Windows Presentation Foundation and

Windows Communication Foundation. Prior to joining BOARD, he was a research anddevelopment engineer at the Ticino Uuniversity of Applied Science, Scuola Universitaria

Professionale della Svizzera Italiana (SUPSI). Here he was also responsible for the Mi-

crosoft Competence Center for southern Switzerland.

Companyhistory

Almost 20 years ago one of the founders of

BOARD, Andrea Traverso, started working for a

consulting company in Milan. One of the partners

in this consulting company, Francesco Rosi, was an

experienced pioneer in the application of technologyto solve the tasks assigned to management. He

remembers: The problem at that time was the clear

separation between technical and operational staff.

It was extremely difcult to nd people who were

competent in both areas.

I started working with Francesco Rosi the idea was

to bring these two areas together, says Andrea

Traverso. Thus began a process that nally led to the

development of Orenburg (as BOARD International

was called at the time of its foundation) and the coreproduct, the BOARD Management Intelligence Toolkit.

is innovative and insightful. Interactive dashboards able

to be composed with a few clicks of the mouse allow

company events to be displayed optically attractive and

meaningful. Thanks to the use of vector graphics, any

object that has been created in BOARD can be enlarged

or reduced without the slightest loss of quality in dis-play. An ideal prerequisite for a high quality of printing

of business reports.

MSOfce2007Integration

BOARD taps the entire potential of MS Ofce 2007. This

is made possible by an advanced Excel add-in and the

ability to create reports in Word and PowerPoint. Data

can be entered both in online and ofine modes. After

working in the ofine mode the data is automatically

synchronised as soon as the next person logs into

BOARD. Integrity and the constant updating of data areguaranteed.

BOARD provides us with a exible, user-friendly andhigh-performance analysis tool that requires minimal

programming knowledge from the users and can be

quickly modied to suit changing conditions. Based

on the concept developed by Alpheus, we are able to

obtain a better level of information for sales control.

Tim Kiefer

Head Accounting/Controlling

Hauck & Aufhuser Banquiers Luxembourg S.A.


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Comprehensiveperformancemanagement

environment

Tasks are assigned to different users according to

the process; events or processes are automatically

started as certain conditions occur, and users obtain

notications about processes and events. In this way

BOARD promotes the efficient management of all

business processes, from simple approval processesto complex planning processes. Functions for what if

analysis and target-setting combined with the possibility

of creating scenarios and managing form a powerful

environment for multidimensional simulations. This

allows conclusions to be automatically drawn on all

evaluation levels with regard to the impacts of future

events, from the highest level of aggregation (e.g. sales

by department) to the smallest detail (e.g. item number).

Figure 4: Thanks to the Ofce add-in, multidimensional data can be processed by BOARD using the drill-down, slice & dice,

lter and pivoting functions in the well-known Excel environment. Because data can be entered in both the online and the

ofine mode, the process of data capture and planning can be carried out very efciently using the Excel Client. After working

in ofine mode the data is automatically synchronised as soon as the user next logs into BOARD. Integrity and the constant

updating of data are guaranteed.

BOARD has allowed us to synthesize the companys

key information in a single holistic vision, a perspec-tive that makes it possible to formulate and execute

our strategy with a clear understanding of its overall

impact.

Fulvio Lamberti

General Manager Finance & HR

Kluber Italia

BOARD supports the simultaneous writeback of data

both into the multidimensional BOARD database and

into relational pre-processing systems through multiple


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users. A logic system from BOARD, which uses changes

that have been made down to the lowest level of detail,

is used for this (e.g. by entering the planned turnover

gures for a single product line, the turnover of each

individual product is updated). The BOARD technologyguarantees the validity of the data.

BOARD places a range of different actions at the users

disposal (multi-dimensional calculations between

cubes, selections, conditional checks, links to other

screens etc.) which are used as aids to efciently create

simulation models and models for supporting business

processes.

The BOARDWebClient is entirely based on Microsoft

Silverlight, a part of Windows Presentation Foundation.This is an innovative Web Runtime (WRT) solution that

removes the traditional limitations of web applications.

The use of this technology allows the creation of BOARD

Rich Internet Applications (RIA). These are for example

applications that work via the internet but which still

retain the typical functionalities and characteristics of

Client solutions. Because the data display is able to bemanaged at Client level, RIAs improve the degree of

interactivity and the speed of execution.

Animations, three-dimensional displays and multimedia

content can be built into the new BOARD Web Client.

This creates a considerably more intense and effective

experience when using this application compared to tra-

ditional web applications in HTML or the rst generation

of AJAX RIA.

Figure 5: Based on Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation, BOARD offers a service oriented architecture (SOA) which

keeps business and data reproduction logic separate.


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BOARDarchitectureserviceoriented

architecture

Based on Microsoft Windows Communication Foundati-

on, BOARD offers a service oriented architecture (SOA)

which keeps business and data reproduction logic sepa-

rate. This state-of-the-art structure offers considerable

advantages with respect to interoperability, managingthe scalability and technological risk. The BOARD server,

which is designed for use as a web service, manages

the SOAP notications and passes back XML data struc-

tures. The services of the BOARD server can be used in

a simple, standardized (W3C standard) manner by other

Summary:

BOARD offers a comprehensive service oriented combined BI and PM solution with process-oriented planning

and analysis based on Microsoft technology. For companies using Microsoft and looking for a solution for

agile corporate management, BOARD is a rst choice for CPM toolkits in all areas of an enterprise due to its

leading-edge architecture, its remarkably good level of integration into the Ofce 2007 world and its highly

intuitive and ergonomic work environment with the right functionalities for both, controllers and process

managers.

web services, legacy systems, Java applications, .NET

and web applications and company portals.

From the 64-bit architecture and the 128-bit cube

addressing function to the Rapid Application

Development (RAD) environment, from Multi-Thread

to the integrated ETL-Process, each individual BOARDcomponent is designed for maximum speed when

developing applications and a high capacity when

dealing with large quantities of data.


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4 Appendix

Literature

Martin, W.: Performance Management and Analytics Business Intelligence meets Business Process Manage-

ment, White Paper version 6.0, www.wolfgang-martin-team.net, Annecy, 2009, 85 pages

This White Paper can be downloaded free of charge from www.wolfgang-martin-team.net

AboutBOARD

BOARD is a leader in the area of business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM) tool-

kits. BOARD has already enabled over 2,000 companies globally to implement BI & CPM applications into a singleintegrated environment without any need for programming and needing a fraction of the cost and time that tra-

ditional solutions can require. BOARD offers a precise overview of company information and completely integrates

it into the CPM processes (budgeting, forecasting, planning, reporting, KPI, scorecards etc.). Thus performance is

combined with strategic vision in a unique manner at all levels right down to the operational details.

BOARD fullls all business performance requirements and guarantees uniform access to company gures for a

single version of truth. BOARD makes it possible to develop sophisticated applications for

TopManagement.BOARD improves the performance and effectiveness of critical business decisions through

the use of visual forecasting and modelling tools.

Sales,marketingandsupportmanagement.BOARD supplies tools for analysing the interactions with cus-

tomers and thus enables an improvement in customer relations and an increase in customer protability.

Finance,productionandplanningmanagement.Critical factors such as budgeting, forecasting, planning

and production analyses are native functions that are supported within the toolkit.

Additionalfunctionalitiesandtoolsare

Balanced scorecard and dashboards

Consolidation

ETL/data integration

BOARD combines business intelligence and corporate performance management to form a single integrated pro-

duct. Over 2,000 customers of all sizes and from all industries worldwide use the unique toolkit approach to impro-ve company-wide analyses to effectively support management in the decision-making process. BOARD is a global

leader in the area of CPM toolkits, and its toolkit offers a unique combination of speed and simple handling.

Further information under www.board.de


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AbouttheauthorDr.WolfgangMartin

Dr. Wolfgang Martin is a leading European authority on:

BI/CPM (Business Intelligence/Corporate Performance Management),

Business Integration (Business Process Management, Enterprise Information Management),

SOA (Service Oriented Architecture),

CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

He focuses on technological innovations that drive business, examining their impact on organization, enterprise

culture, business architecture and business processes. He is partner of iBonD (www.iBonD.net), works as a Ven-

tana Research Advisor (www.ventanaresearch.com) and an Advisor at the Institute of Business Intelligence at the

Steinbeis Hochschule Berlin (www.i-bi.de). In 2001 Info Economist magazine declared him one of the top 10 most

inuential IT consultants in Europe.

Mr. Martin is a notable commentator on conference platforms and in TV appearances across Europe. A frequent

contributor of articles for IT journals and trade papers, he is also the author of the Strategic Bulletins focusing on

BI, EAI, SOA and CRM (www.it-research.net) and an editor of technical literature.


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Agile Corporate Management