MANUFACTURING

Case 1 - Large manufacturer of flavors and fragrance

Case 1:
Customer: Large manufacturer of flavors and fragrance
Technology: Business Intelligence

The Customer

Our customer is a leading manufacturer of flavors and fragrances, supplying raw materials to major manufacturers worldwide. The customer has over 5000 employees and 2500 suppliers worldwide, with multiple production sites distributed across 4 continents.

The Challenge

In its daily operations, the customer undertook the arduous task of collecting and collating information regarding various ingredients, from disparate data sources. This was compounded by the fact that the systems providing the relevant information were regional in nature.

What was obviously needed was a web-based Business Intelligence application that would facilitate the distribution of information across geographical locations, while considering data security issues.

The Solution

An automated job, using Visual Age for Java, was designed to extract data from the source systems and load the data into the database at pre-defined times. The database has a centralized repository supported by a relational structure. Staging tables were built to support reporting on complex queries. Components from the Cognos suite of products were used as a web-based reporting tool for data analysis by users across the globe.

Customer Benefits

• Users can manage and track all the capital expenditure projects through the entire project life cycle.
   
• Users are able to analyze the status and approvals for projects and the budgets based on actual expenditure.
   
• Ad hoc reporting based on various key parameters.
   
• Enhanced decision making by entering the most relevant data.
   
• Reduction in the time taken for data entry and analysis.
  

Testimonial

The customer Project Manager has this to say: "The application was released in production one year ago and has been working perfectly. I wanted to write this mail to mention again that [the application] is a high quality tool built by a high quality team and that we are very happy with the delivered application."