The management at Ejendals, a leading supplier of high-quality products that protect hands and feet, identified a need to access updated and consolidated information about business development—anytime.
This requires the process to be fully automated and provides good opportunities to combine data from different areas independently, enabling relevant analyses.
I am impressed by how quickly this could be realized and how easy it is to work with SAP Analytics Cloud, says Sjö Martin Larsson, Business Controller, Ejendals.
The project was divided into four steps as the solution was designed in Analytics Cloud. Ejendals’ business system, SAP S/4 with associated data warehouse in SAP Business Warehouse, served as the data platform.
The Four Steps:
- Start with what already exists
- Make key metrics accessible
- Build templates and train users
- Let users combine information themselves
Start with What Already Exists.
Following a business from the top level requires consolidating data to gain an overview. If the organization has a well-developed operational follow-up with good data quality as a foundation, the conditions for consolidating information are favorable.
Make Key Metrics Accessible.
Good data makes it easy to create relevant key metrics for follow-up. By presenting the information in the right format, users can combine it in various ways and clearly see business development from multiple perspectives.
Build Templates and Train Users.
We always strive to work with incremental improvements that gradually create value in the solutions. This principle is especially important when we need to create value quickly. We know that what the customer wants initially is not what is ultimately requested. We must account for this from the start. Therefore, we build the solution with templates that we know users can easily continue to build upon. This requires both simplicity in the solution and that users must have the right training in the analytics tool.
Let Users Combine Information Themselves.
A key factor is that part of the solution is for the user to be able to combine the available information in different ways. Once the solution is in place, including the ability and knowledge of how to do this, the user does much of the work themselves. This means the user can produce the many variations available for analyzing the business.
When the board and management can follow the business in real-time with updated figures, they have better conditions to act proactively. Thus, they can focus on fact-based decisions instead of spending time gathering data.
Now, both I and the users can stay updated and easily create our own modern reports that are compatible with phones and tablets, which we consider a big plus in terms of user-friendliness and information accessibility, says Sjö Martin Larsson, Business Controller, Ejendals.
The key to this project was to start quickly, focus on the essentials, reuse existing resources, and design a solution that can be easily developed further. This approach largely summarizes the Implema Way, our how in our work.
