Business Intelligence solutions, based on SAP data warehouse, help the managers in KGHM Polska Miedź SA monitoring the efficiency, support decision taking and make the time of reporting 7 times shorter.
KGHM Polska Miedź SA reported the end of an implementation of monitoring the company’s efficiency, supported by SAP SEM (Strategic Enterprise Management), which is based on SAP BW data warehouse. It is one of the first projects of such type in Poland. The management cockpit started in KGHM along with SAP data warehouse allow one of the world biggest copper and silver manufacturers to monitor efficiently the key cost parameters and substantially increase its analytic possibilities. Newly implemented solutions also offer intuitive access to detailed information in a shorter time.
For a few years KGHM has been successfully using SAP R/3, which managed most business processes in the company. During that time many millions of records have been collected. Implementing Business Intelligence class opened new possibilities in quick access to information vital in terms of managing a mining company with its complicated, staged production process. Implementing Business Intelligence solutions in SAP technology allowed to shorten the project time considerably, and on the stage of current work with this tool will enable flexible adjustment of the system to quickly changing IT needs.
The first stage of the project, implementing the data warehouse and the management cockpit, finished at the end of 2004, allowed to pass the top executives of the company – the board members and unit directors – an intuitive tool which currently presents efficiency parameters vital for every executive. The tool presents information in a graphic form and in grids. The graphic settings are made in such a way that the user of the management cockpit at the first look at the screen could notice the parameters that need to be clarified or corrected. Through detailed breakdowns in the data warehouse the system enables making multi-dimentional analyses for the parameters that differ from the planned values. In the next stage KGHM is going to develop the Business Intelligence tools it already uses in the direction of planning and budgeting and operational reporting.
The project was carried out by KGHM implementation team, composed of almost 30 people. Due to the specifity of the project the implementation team included closely cooperating people from the subject departments (financial departments) and Data Processing Center (COPI), which in KGHM is a competence centre for SAP solutions, among others. In terms of the system the project was carried out by consultants from SAP Poland, supported by BCC consultants.
Simultaneously with implementing the solutions for monitoring cost parameters, KGHM is executing a project in managing the company’s goodwill. As regards the system, the goodwill management in KGHM is also supported by SAP SEM functionalities that handle strategic management in accordance to the concept of a balanced scorecard. Supporting various areas of operational and strategic management by further functionalities of one system, namely Business Intelligence, based on data warehouse, ensures the appropriate information flow among applications (e.g. from planning to the scorecard) and enables to reduce costs of implementation and use of the system.
SAP SEM-CPM (efficiency monitoring) has been used by KGHM in everyday work already for a few months. This time allows to evaluate the advantages of implementing SEM-CPM tools brough to the company. The most important one indicated by the company’s employees is shortening the time of preparing monthly information for the board and the supervisory board. This time has been shortened from 14 to 2 days. The data presented by means of the data warehouse and management cockpit are much more reliable than those that so far have been prepared by the units and consolidated by the management board office with MS Excel. SAP SEM and SAP BW systems give the KGHM employees many more possibilities of analysis which in connection with considerably shorter time for their preparation mean much more efficient use of the human resources.