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MB Logistics Solutions ®
 

Improve Logistics Management Solutions

Logistics MB Solution is an Integral Management Logistic Systems that includes:

  • Warehouse Negotiation
  • Distribution and Transport
  • Negotiation  Information
  • Business Opportunities
  • Business Creation Models

MB Logistics uses a centralized data base that allows remote access to Internet. It´s structural design allows working with different languages (Spanish, English, French and Japanese) clients, operative bases, distribution centers and optimization. This increments the quality of services that are giving to the clients, because of the better planificacion and it also reduces errors.

Some characteristics of Logistic MB

  • Easy operation and personal training
  • Excellent Functionality
  • Counts with BI for users
  • Integration with the central systems of the company.
  • Total integration of all its functions and process.
  • Design by the ultimate technology.

What do we do in Logistic MB?

    • We combine Negotation and operation experience with the capacity ti design innovating solutions pero 10 years in the American market with the help of Oracel, SQL, y Sybase.
    • Our Design Methods assure quality .
    • We have a deep knowledge in the Logistic market and a a strong base in informatics technology.
    • We search for long term relations.
Market Solutions
 

We count with property solutions for industries like:
Miner & Maining, metallurgic and Petroquimic sector.
Financial and Patrimonial sector.
Health Sector
Industrial Manufacture
Logistic and Negotiation
Automobile Industries
Water Municipal Systems.
Will all this experience we are sure that we can give you plenty confident for the solution you need.

CRM is not Technology
  Because of the implementation of the CRM philosophy only requires the use of technologies, a certain confusion in the market was created. Ever since the concept attracted the attention of means, the area of specialized solutions was animated strong and fast. At the moment
a infinity of packages exists that are sold like CRM, this is not truth, contemplate only one part of it. CRM is much more that a software set. It is a continuous process that includes a strategy of businesses, change of culture within the organization and use of technology. By its great complexity, CRM is not implanted by an only time and in a standard form. As well as the clients are different, also each company defers one from the anther.

Obeying to that logic, the CRM is different in a business from another one. An operator of telecommunications, for example that has million subscribers requires of a project of CRM different to one of a company that produces ships. And why does a company that makes ships requires CRM? Because generally a ship lasts 50 years and, throughout that time, the company will require to administer to the relation with many people and organizations. In what the operator concerns, probably it will require data warehouse (data store) to analyze the data of million s of people, the manufacturer of ships will be able to use a simpler system because the number of clients is much smaller.

Nevertheless, more than the tools, it is precise to consider the concepts, the processes and to understand how the CRM model fits within that company in individual. Also it is precise to take into account the objectives tried by the shareholders of the company, to even analyze if a CRM project is justified and, in positive case, by which end it will have to be initiated: by the attention center, by the area of sales (automation of the sale force) or by the marketing research.

  Management system and control of automotive agencies.

It is a system oriented to give SATISFACTORY answers to the Client.
Controls all the states of an order on watch, it diminishes errors
Takes a specific registry by each technician of its operations and its records
It promotes an atmosphere of COLLABORATIVE work
Increments the productivity and yield of the area on watch
Improves the certainty of the times of delivery to the Client
Use a world-wide class tool.

ERP
 

The enterprise management system can transform the way of negotiation inside and outside a company. Its implementation is able to synchronize several sectors of a same corporation, focusing directly in the direction of the results. See how apply that and other concepts boarded in the ERP modules.

The ABC of ERP

In simple terms, the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning or planning of the corporative resources) is a set of systems that have as objective to add and establish relations of information between all the areas of a company. Nevertheless, to understand what this actually means is interesting to return to the decade of the 50s, when the modern concepts of technological control and corporative management begun.

It is truth that the effective technology at the time, cradle in gigantic mainframes (big computers), do not compare at all to the easly managment of modern computers. However, those were machines that rolled the first systems of stock contro - pioneering activity of the insertion between management and technology. The automatization was expensive, slow - but already it demanded less time than the manual processes - and there were few.

In the beginning of the decade of the 70s, the economic expansion and the greater computacional dissemination generated the grandfathers of the ERPs, the MRPs (Material Requirement Planning or planning of the requisitions of materials). They arose already in form of sets of systems, also calls packages, that talked to each other and that made possible the planning of the use of the supplies and the administration of the diverse stages of the productive process.

Following the line evolutive line, the decade of the 80s marked the beginning of the network computers linked to servers- cheaper and easier to use compared to mainframes - and the revolution in the activities of managment production and logistic. The MRP was transformed into MRP II (that meant Manufacturing Resource Planning or planning of the manufacture resources), which also controlled other activities such as manual labor and machinery.

In practice, MRP II already could be called of ERP due to the amplitude of controls. Nevertheless, it is not known for sure when the set of systems gained this denomination. An interesting date is 1975, year in which arose the German company - a symbol in the sector - SAP (Systemanalyse and Programmentwicklung, whose literal translation is Analysis of Systems and Development of Programs). With the launching of software R/2, the same one entered the history of the ERP area and still today it is his greater motor of innovation.

The ERP, a set of integrated systems, had to talk or to look for data in other programs, which was not always easy, and gave as result the impression of forms that needed to be digitados so that the information could be incorporated to the ERP. In agreement with the spacing that existed between the departments inside a company.

The next step, already in the decade of the 80s, served so much to make more agile the processes as to contact between those "departmental lines". Then new systems were added to ERP, known as modules package of management. The contemplated areas would be those of finances, buys and sale and the one of human resources among others, that is, sectors with an administrative connotation and support to the production entered the era of the automatization.

The nomenclature ERP would gain much force in the decade of the 90s, among other reasons by the evolution of the communication networks between computers and the dissemination of the architecture client/server- computers bound to servers, with more competitive prices - and not more mainframes. Also it gained aspects next to those than, we, at the moment know as an important tool in the philosophy of control and management of the corporative sectors.

The promises were so many and so ample that the second half of that time would be characterized by the boom in the sales of management packages. And, along with the international manufacturers, diverse Brazilian suppliers arose, companies that obtained with the sales of the ERP a substitute of the systems that could fail with the bug of the year 2000 - the problem of the two digit date in computer systems.


The importance of ERP in corpotations.

The paradise of the corporative management, with the improvement of the administrative processes and support to the production, began to materialize itself. At least that was the dream of those who invested or had the idea buying a package of management. It is truth that is a great number of projects of ERP that do not evolve by a series of problems, many of internal order, but others end up being efficient and determining for the evolution of the businesses.

One of the more concrete changes that an ERP system provides to a corporation, without doubts, is the greater trustworthiness of data, in real time, and the diminution of work. Something that's obtained with the aid and commitment of employees, in charge of making the systematic update of data that feeds all the chain of ERP modules, bringing as a result the company interaction.

This way, the information travels by modules in real time, that is, a sale order initiates the process of manufacture with the shipment of the information for multiple bases, from stock (storage) of supplies to the logistics of the product. Everything made with organic, integrated and non-redundant data.

In order to understand better how this works, the ERP can be seen like a great data bank with information that interacts and feedback. This way, the initial data undergoes a mutation in agreement with its status, like the sale order that is transformed into the final product located in the deposit of the company.

By undoing the complexity of the acompainment of all the process of production, sale and invoicing, the company has more subsidies to be planned, diminish expenses and to rethink the production chain. A good example of how the ERP revolutionizes a company is that with a better administration of the production, an investment, like a new logistic infrastructure, can be reconsidered or simply left. In this case, when controlling and understanding better all the stages that that build up to the final product, the company can arrive at the point of produinge more intelligent, fast form and better, which, in other words, reduces the time that the product is left unemployed in the stock.

The decision making also receives other dynamics. Imagine a company that, for some reason, perhaps a change in the security norms, needs to modify aspects of the manufacture of one of its products. With the ERP, all the corporative areas are informed and prepared in an integrated form for the event, from purchase to production, passing by the storeroom and arriving even to the marketing area, that may have the necessary information to change something in the advertising campaigns of its products. Everything is made in much less time than the one that would had take without the existence of the system.

From the concrete advances, we can mention the case of a medium-level North American industry of automobile-parts, located in the state of Illinois, which was able to reduce the time between the order and delivery from six to two weeks, increasing efficiency in the date promised for the shipment of the product of 60% for 95%, reducing the reserves of supplies in 60%. Another remarkable difference: the document exchange between departments that usually delayed hours and inclusively days, just took minutes or even seconds.

That is an example, but, in agreement with the company, it is possible to direct or to adapt the ERP for other objectives, establishing priorities that can affect: the chain of production and the support to the department and sales or in distribution, among others. With the capacity of modules integration, it is possible to diagnose in the more or less efficient areas and to focus in processes that can improve the performance with the aid of the systems package.


¿Is your company prepared?

Whenever the integration of the modules of the ERP is greater, more efficient will be the processes. That equation can make the difference at the time of attendinfg and retaining a client. Nevertheless, how to know if a corporation is prepared to use a management integrated system? The answer can evolve form simpler boardings up to ones that are muchmure complex.

It is important to understand that the ERP is not simply software that is bought, installed and used like Windows or a computer game. More than that, it consists of a revolution that involves all the internal processes and must be preceded of an extensive and, often, delayed reevaluation of all the departments, its functions, mechanisms of decision and forms of performance. Nevertheless, it is not recommendable to hope that the system by itself will change the enterprise management. It is necessary to have in mind that is an important and decisive tool, but who commands it, the form in which the data are presented and how the information are later managed, are aspects of extreme importance.

In order to know if a company is apt to work with a ERP is interesting to count on with the external aid of specialists in the subject, in special consultants. They will evaluate, radiograph the company and identify what is needed in order to make sure the system will not create a shock between the internal organization culture, producing studies that will indicate possible actions and adjustments. It is essential, for example, that an equipment of internal professionals and of different departments participate in the project for its definition. In the end, it is not sufficient to buy a Boeing; it is necessary, also, to obtain the pilot license and to locate the people and pieces in the correct places for it to maintain flight.

Normally, some internal processes are needed to be redefined or redesigned before the ERP system begins operating. In addition, as well as the company needs a preparation to receive the system, software must also pass through adjustments with the purpose of becoming compatible with the reality of the corporation, its objectives and profile. The union must be as perfect possible, but as well as in the human relations, the adjustments and the "in-action" corrections they are inevitable and must be put in practice in the possible most transparent way.

It is interesting to notice that often the most sensible department and of greater commitmentin front of the purchase of a ERP system is the one of human resources. The people, their functions and characteristics are a fundamental part in all the process, even by the day to day changes of the company, and must be prepared for the new form of operation.


The best option.

As it happens with any product, the election of the ERP passes from a pure and simple functionality up to how it was the attention of the salesman, references of market or inclusive one better performance of the supplier's marketing. Nevertheless, it's ideal to make a detailed investigation that can involve from outsourcing - Internet, sites and publications of specialized information, companies of the same segment or similar profile and consultants - to investigations done by the professionals of information technology of (TI), passing by the main areas of the company, with its motivations, vindications and ideas.

Once more, the presence of a consultant or specialist can shorten the range between the idea of the acquisition of a ERP and the conclusion of the project, but it is not essential since an area of dynamic TI that cab be dedicated exclusively to that task. Simultaneously to the evaluation and understanding of the processes done to identify if the company is prepared or not for the ERP, the products available in the market and the boardings can be investigated.

Never leave into third hands the responsibility of electing the system that will be installed, since the company is the one who knows its day to day necessities. In the decade of the 90s, it was not rare to find companies that began to use ERP by pure "trend" and, instead of a careful and surrounded process of reliable information routes, the rapidity was the tonic, which was expensive.

The economic aspect counts a lot, but not only must be thought from the perspective of the cost and the benefit, but also already made investments. A company that has an efficient accounting system or human resources and that was still not amortized, may evaluate if it is a good idea to buy the equivalent module of the ERP system, is important to operate to the maximum levels the characteristic of the software's modularity, evaluating the acquisition of the whole package or in parts, and also if the system that the corporation has could be adapted to operate together with the software of enterprise management, and what will be the cost of it. The necessity, the adjustment and the costs must walk together.

Often, a product composition can also be interesting. Look at the example of the Brazilian company of Gol aerial transports. Without time for prolonged analyses due to competition, the company entered activity supported by a system of enterprise management of its own group controller, the holding Áurea, but it did not delay much in identifying the particular profile and demands. By means of a report done in 60 days by a consultant, the Gol Company selected to the Oracle/RM dual-Systems as the corporative platform. The technological base - applications in three layers with the Oracle data base - had already been prescript by the TI equipment, which went to market to identify the ERPs which fulfilled the proposed requirements. In that place, they reduced two options that were presented and approved by the users. Both were installed. The department of human resources (RH) preferred the package of the RM systems and the financier decided on the Oracle Financial.

Nevertheless, this combination is not always possible, sometimes due to the corporative profile or the mutual incompatibility and cost of the product. In the days of budget lack, for sure cost finished being preponderant. It is possible then to mention all the details involved in the acquisition of an ERP system: the price of the system, if it is complete or divided into module packages; the values of consultancy or implementation process society; the maintenance and discounts for future acquisitions of a newer versions.

It is not coincidence the existence of metrics and evaluations that control how many months will be necessary to spend quantity returns in the form of businesses and economy of resources improvement. But, like all forecast, it is interesting to carefully read what this evaluation proposes. The numbers in the paper can reflect a distant not known reality.

In addition to the values, a company can have its strategy like main election motive. There, the wished management levels and how products and services can benefit in the process, will be explored. The counterpart is to study how the packages of ERP can provide it. The detailed report of actions and the internal evaluations can be slow, but they compensate and reflect the result of a right election.


The ERP verification


According to the characteristic of the company, the election of the package gains a series of filters that may facilitate the decision of purchase. In the end, it is common to see suppliers with different degrees of specialization in their products or inclusively modules pointed for a specific segment. During the market study, for example, it is common to verify that a certain solution can have a greater acceptance or adaptation in the segment of auto-parts and minor in wholesale companies.

The first and decisive point of movement is that at the same time at which the foreign suppliers have a technological leadership in the sector, which is reflected in end products, its prices are more elevated while the speed of development is slower. The multinational manufacturers are unbeatable for corporations with high desk-diversity and great number of employees/activities. Meanwhile, inside the sector of medium and small companies. There is not much success, in occasions by of the costs aspect or by the adaptation of their systems to reality.

However, this border is not like the Chinese Wall. Some foreign suppliers gain space by their characteristic of specialization, independently as large as the client. A solution that becomes adherent and detailed for a great company, with expressive participation in the market, finishes influencing the entire segment. Nevertheless, the locals gain in agility in the development and adjustments to the norms of their origin Country, especially in the accounting modules, accounts to pay (that include taxes and rates that according to the region are more or less mutant) and of human resources.

It is not rare, for example, that manufacturers offer specific modules by vertical segment. Systems exist, which descend to the level of specificity of an agricultural control like, for example, a module can be interesting for a distillery industry , but can be inadequate for a factory of decontamination of soybean. The detail level that a product proposes can be exaggerated, and it is necessary a good evaluation not to buy something that won't be used.

 

 

Business Intelligence
 

More and more, intercrossing data to create strategies is an essential factor in the market. A technique that made, decision making and the tools of BI inseparable elements. As part of that reality: the tools used in the processes, integrations, solutions and other fundamental concepts of the Business Intelligence.

Unlike what may be thought, the concept of Business Intelligence is not recent. Phoenicians, Persian, Egyptian and other Eastern towns used this principle thousands of years ago when they utilized, in own benefit, data info obtained from nature. To observe and analyze the behavior of the tides, the periods of drought and rains and the position of the stars, among others, were ways of obtaining data was later used in decision making, which allowed improvements in the life of their respective communities.

The world changed since then but, the concept continues being the same one. The necessity of relating information to make an efficient enterprise management is today a reality as true as in the past discovering if the swelling of the tide would be propitious to obtain a more abundant fishing. At the moment, the interest of BI grows more and more because its use allows the corporations to make a series of analysis and projections through which they manage to make more agile the processes related to decision making. This is what Howard Dresner , vice-president of Gartner Inc.Company defined. The North Americans, like Howard Dresner, gained fame due to the development of the modern tools of BI. Nevertheless, in terms of historical registries, Yves-Michel Marti, scientist, professor and founder of Egideria, one of the greatest European companies of consultancy in Business Intelligence, defend that, in fact, the Old Continent is the cradle of the BI concept, the place where its pioneering application took place and that, without doubt, all this happened long before Howard Dresner was born. According to Marti, the tradition of the European countries is filled with references on the subject. In its studies on intelligent economy, one of the mentioned examples emphasizes that, at the end of century XVI, in the days of Reina Elizabeth I and with the objective of occupying the conquered territories, the base of the English Force was determined as "information and commerce" and asked to the philosopher Francis Bacon to invent a dynamic system of information that later was widely applied by the English.

Of a simplified enough but not less efficient way, the authorities of Venice, in Italy, used a strong network of prostitution to obtain data from important foreign visitors and, in Holland, the development of the commerce took place thanks to the interchange of descendants of merchants who spent years with other families learning and exchanging information over the purchase and sale of products in different cities of the country. In Spain, immediately after conquering America, the king created the "House of Gold", place where all the transactions of compulsive gold payment were registered which turned out to be a useful tool to manage having a general vision of the economy of the country. In the studies of Marti can be find appointments referring to Sweden, Portugal and Spain, among other European countries, but, as it were said previously, it corresponded to a North American, from the famous Gartner Group institute, to baptize the concept and the technology applied to the enterprise management: Business Intelligence.

To the compass of the TI evolution.

In agreement with the optics of technology, the era that we can call "pre-BI" is find not far distant in a past - approximately between thirty and forty years ago. Then the computers stopped occupying gigantic rooms because they were diminishing of size and, at the same time, the companies began to perceive that the data was a possible and important generating source of decisive information. Nevertheless, in those times it didn't exist the efficient resources that allowed a consistent analysis of those data in order to be used in the decision making. It was possible to collect data of integrated way, fruit of established systems with predominance of related data but that, reunited as closed blocks of information, made possible a vision of the company but did not cause decisive gains nor improvements in the businesses. We are speaking of end of 60s, period in which the punched cards, the transistors and language COBOL were the reality of Computer science. It was the time at which computers were defined as something unknown, just modern idea that still seemed like a distant reality.

The panorama began to change in the decade of the 70s with the sprouting technologies: storage and access to data - DASD (Direct Access Storage Device - DASD), and SGBD (Gerenciador System of Data bank) - , two abbreviations whose main meaning was the one to establish an only source of data for all the processing. Since that moment the computer began to be seen as a central coordinator of the corporative activities and the data bank were considered a basic resource to assure a competitive advantage in the market.

At the beginning of 90s, most of the great companies only counted on Information Centers (CI) that, although they contained an important stock of data, offered very little availability of information. In spite of that, the CIs satisfied, in certain form, the necessities of the executives and those people who had the responsibility to make decisions since they provided managemental information. The market began to behave in a more complex way and the technology of the information advanced in the improvement of software tools that offered precise information in the opportune moment to define actions that focused towards a better performance in the world of the businesses.

Between 1992 and 1993 Data Warehouse arose, a great informational data base, that may be defined as a "container - unique deposit" of data (which was consolidated, clean and uniformed) and considered by the specialists in subject like the essential piece for the practical execution of a Business Intelligence project. However, whan talking about BI, the opinions are not always unanimous. For some consultants it is very important for a company that wishes to implement analysis tools to have an "specific container" to collect the data or transform it into information (we will approach this question in a more detailed form later in the course). This "container" doesn't needs to be, Data Warehouse, it can be something the less complex like, for example, Data Mart (data bank designed for specific departments in customized form), or a common relational data bank independent form the transaccional (operational)atmosphere and dedicated to store information that will be used as base for the accomplishment of different analyses and projections.

How did the BI evolved form EIS?

As it was previously commented, the concept of Business Intelligence is very old. Nevertheless, the produced technological development since the decade of the 70s and in the later years, made possible the creation of tools that entered the market to facilitate all the process of pick up, extraction, storage, filtration, availability and personalización of data. Thanks to this, the corporative sector began to be interested in the solutions of BI of one more a more forceful form, mainly towards end of 1996, when the concept began to be spread like a process of evolution of the EIS - Executive Information Systems - a system created at the end of the decade of the 70s, from works developed by investigators of the MIT (Massachusets Institute of Tecnology-EUA).

The Executive Information Systems (EIS) is, in truth, a software whose main objective is to provide enterprise information from a data base. It is a tool of consultation of the enterprise function's data bases that presents the information in simple and pleasant form and for that reason it satisfies, mainly, the necessities of the high executives of the administration. It allows the daily pursuit of results since tabulates data of all the functional areas of the company and soon exhibits it in graphical and simplified form, so that, they can be easily understood by those executives that don't have deep knowledge on technology. In simple terms, the EIS allows those professionals a pleasant access, by electronic paths, a series of information displayed in clear and visually attractive forms. Navigation is made through the use of mouse or "touchscreen" system (sensible screen to the tact) and, in both cases, it doesn't require ability, nor practice, neither and any type of attendance. The main objective of the EIS is to offer its user, in a short space of time, a managing vision of the organization which will show how work processes labor and how the company is related to the outer world of the businesses, its clients and suppliers.

As years pass, the term Business Intelligence began, within a natural process of evolution, to end up with more tools like, for example, the EIS (Executive Information System - EIS), solutions DSS (Support Decision System - system of support to the decisions), Electronic Lists, Generating of Consultations and Information, Marts Data, Mining Data, Tools OLAP, and many others whose objective is to promote commercial agility, have a more efficient decision making capacity, refine relations strategies with clients and, and as a result, satisfy the necessities with the corporative sector.

The history of the Business Intelligence has a deep link to ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), abbreviation that represents the integrated systems of enterprise management, whose function is to facilitate the operational aspect of the companies. Those systems register, process and document each new fact that happened in the corporative gear as well as being in charge of the distribution of clear, safe and real-time information. Even so,, the companies that implemented those systems soon gave account as which the single fact to store a great soon notices that data did not serve much if the information was repeated, incomplete and distributed in several systems within the corporation. They realized it was necessary to have tools that allowed to collect of data in a unique base and to work with them in such form that would possible to make different analysis, from varied angles. For that reason, most of the ERP suppliers began to include in their packages the modules of BI, which were more and more sophisticated.

 

New transformations

Traditionally, the Business Intelligence was dominion of the personnel of TI and the specialists in investigations of market, people in charge of the extraction of data, the implementation of processes and to notify the results to those executives who had the responsibility to make decisions. But, the growth of Internet modified everything. Until then the concept was applied to put certain information at disposition of few selected employees from company so that they could made use of it in the decisions-making time, the Internet transformed that scene and, nowadays, the network allows us to offer BI solutions to a greater number of people.

The Web - and particularly the electronic commerce - accelerated all the businesses in all levels. Added to that the profile of the new consumer, who appears virtually, and needs the actions turn towards the satisfaction of real necessities. In order to know which are those necessities, a company needs to have commercial more and more to agility, capacity to take decisions and refinement in the strategies from clients, all that within the smallest possible time. To this it is added to, in the companies, the importance of reaching the goals began to demand a greater corporative commitment and, at the same time, the democratization of the information. Internally, the BI didn't change of hands, but added more hands and, mainly, more thinking heads with access to information. The Business Intelligence began to be faced like an integrated strategic application, being available through simple desktops, workstations and stronger servers of the company.

Actualmente, corporaciones de pequeño, mediano y gran porte necesitan el BI no sólo para auxiliarlas en las más diversas situaciones que implican tomas de decisión, sino también para optimizar el trabajo de la organización, reducir costos, eliminar la duplicación de tareas, permitir previsiones de crecimiento de la empresa como un todo y ayudarlas a la hora de elaborar estrategias. No importa el tamaño de la empresa sino las necesidades del mercado. Cuando se analiza el factor costo / beneficio, la mayoría de los analistas percibe la aplicabilidad eficiente de BI en todas las empresas, inclusive en aquellas que presentan facturación reducida. Para que un proyecto de BI logre que la empresa emprenda el camino hacia un mejor desempeño, es necesario analizar muy bien algunos factores: cuánto se va a gastar y qué se espera obtener, o sea, es preciso que el proyecto esté objetivamente alineado con los intereses de la empresa.

At the moment, corporations of small, medium and great posture need the BI not only to help them in the diverse situations than decision making implies, but also to optimize the work of the organization, to reduce costs, to eliminate the duplication of tasks, to allow growth forecasts in the company, as a hole, and to help at the time of elaborating strategies. It does not concern the size of the company but the necessities of the market. When the factor is analyzed cost/benefit, most of the analysts it perceives the efficient applicability of BI in all the companies, including in which they present/display reduced invoicing. So that a BI project obtains that the company undertakes the way towards a better performance, it is necessary to analyze very well some factors: how much one is going away to spend and what one hopes to obtain, that is, it is precise that the project objectively is aligned with the interests of the company.

 

What can we obtain with BI?

Many companies had already collected the good fruits offered by the BI solutions. This was the case of Diebold Procomp, company specialized in the production and commercialization of solutions for the banking and corporative automatization. With the motivation to work in a more agile atmosphere, with numbers and information of diverse areas, the unit of technical attendance of Procomp decided to mainly begin the implementation of a solution of Business Intelligence (BI) cradle in a Microsoft platform, using the data bank manager: SQL Server 2000 and Excel 2000.

In the company, the 1,300 professionals of the technical attendance division work with a series of information that must be precise and updated in order to guarantee good attention to the client. Until the last part of the year 2000, that information were provided in Excel lists, obtained after a series of processes in a Paradox atmosphere, commonly being to disposition to those who needed them with 15-30 days of delay due to the diverse manual interventions that were carried out in the process. In addition, the system only allowed a static vision and that characteristic reduced its utility. The opening of a call, for example, delayed several days until consisting of managed information. Based on the long time that existed between the moment at which the fact took place and the availability of the corresponding information in the system, it was common that the managers used their own analyses and indicators. In general, those data were not compatible with documents provided by the personnel of technical attendance and, therefore, the managed analysis of the operation became difficult. Another negative impact of the constant rises made by the managers was the diminution of the performance of the transactional system, since the same one supported all the operation of the company.

However, that panorama changed since November, 2000 when the company adopted tools such as: SQL Server 2000, Microsoft Analysis Services 2000, Office the 2000 and Services Terminal, of Windows 2000. The solutions were easy to use, with a good level of performance and totally integrated. The most remarkable were the functionalities of the tool Data Transformation Services (DTS) the DTS extracts information of the CRM - with base in SQL Server -, of the management system and of some other sources and soon it consolidates them in the relational data bank. As a result, all the nights, buckets of information are generated focused in the necessities of the different areas inside the company. The branchs have access to the buckets through the Terminal Services. In the network of Diebold Procomp, the software of ERP is executed Magnus, Datasul and the CRM of Peoplesoft, in addition to diverse systems developed internally with the use of the tool Visual Microsoft BASIC 6. All the branchs are connected online to the offices of San Pablo through links of high capacity communication.

At a first moment, the technicians of the system-department received qualification for the handling of the products that constitute the solution of Microsoft. After the implementation, that was finalized in April of 2002, approximately 100 users distributed by all the country were trained in the techniques of exploration of the buckets using Excel 2000. The investment made by Diebold Procomp in this project was of USS $150 thousands, having spend itself approximately USS $10 thousands in qualification, USS $20 thousand in the acquisition of Microsoft products and other USS $120 thousands in personnel. The fact that the company worked with the package of Office 2000 eliminated the cost of software for the exploration of the buckets. With the implementation of tools OLAP, of Microsoft, Diebold Procomp could automate all the processes of obtaining transaction of data, reducing from 20 days to only 24 hours the average time for liberation of referred data to certain operation. Another visible benefit that users could took advantage of, was the independence between relations in the area of systems, this produced gains in flexibility and agility at the time of obtaining data and generating an increasing the performance of the transaccional system thanks to the elimination of managemental consultations in this atmosphere. The new system also guaranteed the uniformity of performance indicators and this facilitated Diebold Procomp to make comparisons between diverse products, regions and other metrics. The project included the use of other solutions, which they are Project 2000, Exchange Server 2000; Visio 2000; Line of vision Studio 6.0; other operational versions of SQL Server and systems Windows 95 and 98.

Between the main obtained benefits, the most remarcable were:
- The automatization processes of obtaining transactions of data and the consequent reduction of the average time in releasing information that happened from 20 to only 1 day;
- Independence of the managers with relation to the area of systems, which produced gains in flexibility and agility in the obtaining of information;
- Increase of the transaccional system performance thanks to the elimination of managemental consultations in this environment

 
 

 

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