„It used to be very difficult for us in Controlling, for example, to deter­mine the group-wide turn­over with a car manu­fac­turer,“ explains Melanie Rosen­berger, Team Leader Business Intelli­gence at Scherdel. „We had to request the necessary infor­mation from the indi­vi­dual locations and enter it manually in Excel. By the time we had collected all the data, it was basi­cally out of date and we were more occupied with discussing the accuracy of the figures than deci­ding whether and what action was needed.“ There­fore, a new solution needed to be created that would allow the data to be accessed and analyzed quickly and in a struc­tured manner. The first step was to set up a data ware­house based on Micro­soft SQL Server and Analysis Services in order to ensure a uniform company-wide data basis.

Thirteen different source systems were connected, including solu­tions for ERP, CRM, quality manage­ment and cost calcu­lation. Data analysis for reporting was initially still carried out using Micro­soft Excel. „We used pivot tables to access the cubes built with Analysis Services. Every employee had Excel on their computer and could obtain the figures they needed at the touch of a button. However, we in Controlling quickly realized that when it came to defining stan­dard reports, it was much more diffi­cult with Excel,“ Rosen­berger explains. „It takes a lot of time to create a report – every month anew. That’s why we searched for business intelli­gence front-ends that allow you to define reports once and then update them with just a click.“