Timely availability of data in the required format for enabling decision making was a challenge for our operational users. Taking informed decisions is the best method of providing your sales and marketing team with the edge in any market place.” - Umesh Mehta, CIO, Asia Motor Works Ltd.

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Asia motor works opts 1KEY for dynamic MIS,
ad-hoc reporting and complex analysis
” Timely availability of data in the required format for enabling decision
making was a challenge for our operational users. Taking informed decisions is the
best method of providing your sales and marketing team with the edge in any market
place.” - Umesh Mehta, CIO, Asia Motor Works Ltd.
E
stablished in the year 2002, Asia Motor Works challenge is to look into the future. With BI, our
Ltd. with 788 employees and around 788 operational users run vendor performance reports
crores turnover is a leading company in highly which they use to prepare manually and were
Technology Trends
competitive Heavy Commercial Vehicles industry. taking days earlier. Company employees are now
AMW specializes in design and manufacture of high able to track changes in inventory movement by
tonnage vehicles on a hybrid platform. AMW having region and product category. They also analyze
its manufacturing facility in Bhuj with a product performance by vendor to enable them to
manufacturing capacity of 24000 fully built vehicles more effectively manage vendors toward
is in the process of rolling out a vast and profitability. BI has come at a cost-effective price-
dependable, nationwide sales service and spares point, a powerful tool in the hands of our
network, comprising 30 Main Dealers and 450 sub operational users for ad-hoc MIS reporting and
dealers. analysis. Timely availability of information in
required reporting format and presentation has
Challenge: AMW was using SAP standard reports. empowered business users to take pro-active and
But those were not enough much accurate decisions.
specially from the senior
management point of view, Roadmap: AMW started the
where they wanted comparisons project with output from SAP in
between two different horizons Excel sheet. Created a
on the same data set and also database in SQL Server and
linkage between two different connected BI for reporting and
data sets in one single report e.g. analysis. AMW is planning to
how has been purchasing trend read RFC’s directly from 1KEY
vis-à-vis sales, how has been sales SAP Connector and extract to a
vis-à-vis product costing. To database for BI. One technical
understand current overall and one functional expert from
scenario and MIS reports being each area were involved in the
made available to the top implementation of BI. AMW’s
management for analysis, top management was directly
Business Intelligence (BI) had Mr. Umesh Mehta, CIO, involved in designing the report
become must for AMW. Even the Asia Motor Works Ltd. format and layout. They gave
operational user required ad-hoc the inputs which helped in
analysis with slice & dice, drill-down, drill-through generating value added reports. Reports from BI
like functionalities. are directly delivered to the company’s executives
and top management for the eagle view of
Solution: There is a major difference in classical enterprise.A three days training was given to AMW
business transaction projects (like ERP and SCM and they could start using BI. It is well appreciated
implementations) and BI / MIS Reporting projects. by the AMW business users both at the
The difference is that the objective of business headquarters and plant. The user community will
transaction project can be specified exactly, expand to almost all domains and most of the
whereas for BI / MIS Reporting it is much more employees by the end of 2009
difficult to articulate your information needs. The
end result of processing business transactions will Benefits: AMW found that the best way to protect
lead to knowing exactly what happened previously, their current capital investments was by investing
whereas for your reporting requirements the further into managing its most valuable asset-
ENGINEERING REVIEW AUGUST 2009 169

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‘information’. BI gives AMW the freedom to be Cost savings: AMW sees significant improvements
proactive and innovative instead of always reacting to the bottom line, including increased productivity,
to market movements. AMW is expecting this to material cost savings, and a more agile strategy
continue to drive the company ahead of its development process with immediate insight into
competitors. BI has now become AMW’s enterprise business performance metrics that will help drive
standard reporting and analysis platform. The future success. AMW uses 1KEY as a tool to identify
required reports were created in a month time from significant cost-saving opportunities.
1KEY. BI is not just a corporate-wide management
information system, but is also a tool to support Improving customer service: Implementing 1KEY
and facilitate executive decision-making. has given AMW a significant competitive edge.
Sophisticated information management of the
Reports company’s data helps spot trends more quickly,
Reports produced from the BI are delivered predict risk more accurately and manage inventory
directly to the company’s executives. BI makes more efficiently.
Technology Trends
information available from a wide range of BI is now a key means of enabling AMW’s
departments at AMW, such as: front-line workers and operational managers to
• Spares, which includes first pick %, service levels, spend less time in struggling to locate and access
fast/slow/non-moving spares, spares detailed information and more on activities that benefit the
register, etc. business, such as improving efficiency and customer
• Sales reports, including daily and monthly sales, service. Now its front-line sales, service and contact
repeat customers, take-head wise sales, Budget v/ center personnel do have the required information
s Actual Sales Report that enables them to identify and resolve customers’
• Sales cube with cost analysis and finance data: concerns, operational processes that impact the
Model wise, Chassis wise Sales contribution (against customer will be focused fully on improving
BOM) report, Margin Analysis against non satisfaction.
manufactured items, Discount tracking
• CRM cube with sales data: Product wise Repeat After the finance function : AMW has deployed BI
customers on orders and on invoice, news in sales, marketing, and field service. As for its
customers added, existing customers retained operations “customer” is the most important
• Inventory: Stock Transfer reports, Consumption performance management metric. Providing
Cube – Material Receipts and Issues reconciliation comprehensive information is vital to improving
• Service reports, consisting of dealer and cost customer service, and a key part of it is a single
percentage wise warranty & service source or view of each customer. 1KEY helped AMW
• Purchase, including detailed register build such views by integrating all relevant data
from multiple sources. Gaining a single, complete
• Finance: Exceptional reports, Expense – Budget
view of each customer is one of our most important
v/s Actual
business drivers for deploying a BI tool.
• Costing Cube: BOM wise standard cost, current
cost, last PO cost
Employee Productivity: AMW sees a benefit in
• Unique parts across all products improved productivity in our knowledge workers.
• Debtors / Creditors Cube: General ledger Account The ratio of time our people spend focusing on
wise reconciliation against Sales invoices & costing strategic to non-strategic work is greatly improved.
invoices With 1KEY, AMW sees a 30 to 35 percent productivity
improvement in a year’s time.
Impact: Improving market share: With improved BI has helped the managers at AMW
visibility into business performance, AMW expects enhance their knowledge productivity. The
to improve its year on year growth by around 10% analytical drill down and powerful graphic display
and also increase in its market share. AMW now capabilities help them to quickly access information
has a clear insight into the trends of the needed to develop effective strategies. 30% more
marketplace, and we can now sell aggressively to time spent on strategic analysis to improve the
the demands of today while responding with agility speed and quality of decision making. AMW sees
to the demands of tomorrow.BI’s access to 30-35 % Productivity improvement in next 8-10
information helps every department that needs to months.
disseminate trustworthy insight quickly and For more information
collaborate on that insight between team Softcore Solutions
members. E-mail: sales@softcoresolutions.com
170 ENGINEERING REVIEW AUGUST 2009