Case Study Analysis on Ramco Cement BI Initiatives

1. Ramco Cement Limited
insight into their marketing analytics
APDS IIMC CASE STUDY
BY
GROUP A
ABHISHEK, ADITYA, AMIT, ANAND, MADHUP, NIKITA, PRONOND, SAUMAK & VISHAL
1

2. Content
• Background
• Business model
• How did business intelligence help Ramco in effective problem solving?
• What were some of the critical success factors for Ramco in their implementation of
business intelligence system?
• How can Ramco enhance their marketing analytics system?
2

3. Ramco’s Background
5th largest cement
producer with a total
production capacity
16.5 MPTA
Over 2900
employees and a
sophisticated
R&D centre in
Chennai
9 state of the art
cement production
facilities with 5
integrated cement
plants & 4 grinding
units
1938
1957
2017
Ramco Group founded by
PAC Ramasamy Raja with
diverse business areas
Opened 1st cement
manufacturing plant in
Viruthunaga with a INR 1 million
investment from State govt
producing Portland cement
1 billion dollar
enterprise
headquartered in
Chennai
First major IT investment to deploy
UNIX based minicomputers supporting
various processes- technology
pioneers
1981
3

4. Business Model
Sells to
institutional
customers &
through huge
network of
distributors
Advanced IT
infrastructure to
maintain
transparency at
all levels of
business
transactions
Heavy reliance on
sales team to
liaise, manage &
work with
distributors
Focus on Key
Performance
Indicators(KPIs)
for fair evaluation
of sales
performance
Tracking KPIs at
different levels
to:
•Identify trends &
regional bias
•Increase
accountability and
ownership amongst
employees
•Effective forecasting
based on real time
sales data
4

5. How did Business Intelligence help Ramco in
effective problem solving?
5

6. Overarching Goal
With the effective use of BI, Ramco was able to break down inter-departmental silos
and collect meaningful insights to help reduce overall inefficiencies. This in all
business areas, perform better forecasting and increase profits. Being foresighted in
identifying the problems and implementing a solution helped Ramco to not only drive
sales but to increase employee satisfaction.
6

7. Business Intelligence Initiative at Ramco
Type of data
collected
Operational Real-time data Transactional data
Area of impact
Complex cement manufacturing
process
Customer and dealer relationships
What did BI
collect/monitor?
Monitor & collect complex, high
volume data/metrics over different
processes in various plants
Customer behavior patterns, KPIs of
dealers
How did it help?
Identify and weed out
inefficiencies- reducing costs and
increasing profit margins
Helped management to improve
customer satisfaction and
dealer/salesforce performance
ERP system Implementation
7

8. Issues
• Lack of a dynamic KPI monitoring system to collect granular data (regions, districts, dealers etc.)
• Lack of a visual tool for Goals vs KPIs
• Need for an optimization tool to reduce outbound logistics cost
Solutions
• Ramco Geoapps: Provides performance data at a geographic level on Google Map
• Ramco Perfmon: Visualisation of KPI against goals
• Ramco Advanced Planning & Optimization: Dynamic optimization tool to reduce outbound cost
Major
Achievements
• Reduced penalties, losses and demurrage during the wagon clearance process by up to 70%
• Improved consignment clearance time by up to 40%.
• Successfully captured 20-30% market share in unrepresented markets
Business Intelligence Initiative at Ramco 8

9. Marketing&Advertising • Lack of standardization for employee appraisal
• Employees KPIs not aligned with the teams strategic goals
• No standard method to compare operational and performance metrics geographically
• Standardized KPIs and developed dashboards for effectively visualizing and monitoring employee
performance
• Overlaying dashboard on google maps helped compare performances across regions
• Lack of standardization protocols for strategic placement of hoardings for maximum profit and
impact against competition
• Lack of standardized approach to determine optimized hoarding parameters for high impact (size,
height, distance between 2 hoardings)
• No way to monitor the impact of billboards on regional sales
• Ineffective manual tracking of billboard contracts expiry led to losing prime spots to competition
• Google map system was used to plot all Ramco and competitors advertisement assets to strategize
better
• Revamped advertisement plan helped to explore and advertise to new locations
• Setting and enforcing optimized standards on hoarding placement parameters for contractors
• Automated systems helped in effectively tracking the advertisement expiry ensuring prompt action
to maximize ROI
CHALLENGES
SOLUTIONS
HRM
CHALLENGES
SOLUTIONS
9

10. What were some of the critical success factors
for Ramco in their implementation of
Business Intelligence system?
10

11. Ramco’s Holistic Approach
Unlike traditional approach that solely focus on sales data to drive decisions, Ramco adopted a very
holistic approach to the final goal of increasing market share and sales. They constantly identified
business areas that could benefit from BI, which led to a quick turnaround time to identifying
inefficiencies and providing an effective solution to address them, hence reducing overhead, employee
frustration and increasing profits.
11

12. OBJECTIVE
CriticalSuccess
Factors
Improve
manufacturing
operations
• Identify
inefficiencies
early to reduce
overhead costs &
increase profit
Improve
customer and
dealer
satisfaction
• Increase
transactional
transparency
• Track KPIs
effectively
• Forecast by
studying patterns
and trends/regions
• Visual depiction of
goals to motivate
teams
Reduce logistics
cost by
streamlining
operations
• Upgrade excel
legacy systems to
dynamic solutions
that can capture real
time complex data
• Increase cross
device compatibility
for easy access
Improve
employee
satisfaction
• Visual dashboard to
view/monitor KPIs,
employee
performance
• Overlay KPIs and
sales data on a map
to compare metrics
across regions
Drive sales by
improving
marketing &
advertising
• Increase awareness
• Improve distributor
network
• Use BI to identify
new regions to
acquire market
share in high
potential areas
• Be more strategic in
placement of
hoardings/billboard
s
Resolve
contractor pain
points
• Effectively monitor
contractor records
to prevent lapses
• Reduce region to
region
inconsistencies by
standardizing the
contractor workflow
• Provide easy
solutions to
contractors to help
standardize process
and record keeping
Objectives & Critical Success Factors
12

13. How can Ramco enhance their marketing
analytics system?
13

14. Scope Of Marketing System Analytics Enhancement
• Pricing analytics for different areas to win over competition and to gain more market share in new regions
• Integrate real time data of geographical sales with that of advertising efforts in that particular region
• Identify underperforming regions by mapping contractor KPIs and current sales data to provide additional training/support
to the contractors
• Inputs and feedbacks from the contractors, developers should be included in the system
• Identify and target high potential construction zones and responsible contractors to quote attractive pricing for high volume
orders
• Measure visual engagement using eye tracking in advertising billboard
• Compare the impact of billboards on highways vs by-lanes to penetrate specific regions and modify strategy
• Monitor and track metrics to understand the impact of advertising tactics in specific regions for effective fund allocation
• Determine the cost effectiveness of the marketing and advertising tactics by analysing generated revenue to aid in
appropriate fund allocation and forecasting
14