CHAPTER 10 CASE STUDY: COLGATE PALMOLIVE KEEPS MANAGERS SMILING WITH EXECUTIVE DASHBOARDS

1. Describe the different types of business intelligence users at Colgate-Palmolive.

The different types of business intelligence users at Colgate-Palmolive Colgatehad been a global SAP user since the early 1990s, but it was running five separate ERP system to serve its different geographic regions. Over a period of time, disparities in the data developed between different geographic regions and between the data used at the corporate level and the data used by an individual region or business unit

Other than that, Colgate choses to creating a single global data repository using SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse, SAP’s analytical, reporting and data warehousing solution. Colgate’s regional ERP System feed their data to the warehouse, were the data are standardized and formatted for enterprise-wide reporting and analysis. This eliminates differences in data across the enterprise.

Furthermore, Colgate’s Information Systems specialist then implemented SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator to speed up data loads and improve user perception and adoption, and then they implemented SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence to build customized reports. SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence provides a powerful, intuitive interface that enables business professionals to ask spontaneous questions about their data.

2. Describe the “People” issues that were affecting Colgate’s ability to use business intelligence.

The “People” issues that were affecting Colgate’s ability to use business intelligence is like every time a sales report was run, it showed different number for orders and shipments. Colgate wanted more useable data to drive business decisions and all of its managers and business units worldwide to work with the same version of data.

In addition, for of the output of the warehouse for senior manager is daily HTML table that showing series of financial and operational metrics for the day compared to the previous month and quarter. However the data were not being used enough employees in their decision making to have an impact on business benefit.

Eventually, Colgate’s senior manager and other casual user began requesting deeper access to the warehouse data in a more timely and user-friendly format. They want reports that were easier to run where the data could be interpreted faster. Senior management requested customizable.

3. What people, organization and technology factors had to be addressed in providing business intelligence capabilities for each type of user?

Colgate’s Senior Managers and other casual users, on the other hand did not feel comfortable running ad hoc reports or drilling down into the layers of data to answer questions the data brought to light. They did not have much time to spend developing reports and the standard reports produced for them by the warehouse lacked navigation and drill down capabilities.

Eventually Colgate’s senior manager and other casual users began requesting deeper access to the warehouse data in a more timely and user-friendly format. They wanted reports that were easier to run where the data could be interpreted faster. Senior management requested customizable, real-time dashboards that could be more easily used to drive performance improvement.

Colgate’s information systems specialists then implemented SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerators to speed up data loads and improve user perception and adoption and they implemented SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence to build customized reports.

4. What kind of decisions does Colgate’s new business intelligence capability support? Give three examples. What is their potential business impact?

For Colgate, better reporting tools that can support different kinds of users have greatly expanded the use of business intelligence throughout the company. Currently about 4000 users interact with Colgate’s SAP system daily, but this number is expected to expand to 15000 or 20000 users in the future. People who are accustomed to seeing reports stuffed with numbers are finding that they can use the information presented in dashboards to make faster decisions.For example, managers can determine positive or negative financial conditions by simply looking for negative financial conditions by simply looking for where dashboard reports use the colour green, which reflects improvements in Colgate’s financial position.