Implementing SAP Business Intelligence
The Client
About
Graff Diamonds
Headquartered in London, Graff Diamonds is a truly global business with salons in over fifty locations worldwide. The CEO and the leadership team are completely mobile. The global environment in which the company operates means that sales and production happen twenty-four hours a day.
Malcolm MacLean, Head of IT, and the Graff project team identified that information could be used by the company as a strategic asset.
Providing immediate insight to the key decision makers into sales performance and jewellery production and stock could enable a more agile business, supporting its growth and extending its market leadership position.
The Solution
Making it Work
Codestone has delivered an SAP analytic platform which models Graff’s key metrics and processes into SAP BusinessObjects which can be queried and analysed in any combination. This design is what makes Graff able to promote business growth and react to changes in demand and supply.
Codestone worked with Malcolm to devise ways of reporting on business processes that had previously been hard to achieve. The team used an agile method meaning using initial ideas and versions of content to help the business articulate what they needed.
Codestone was able to achieve 100% of Graff’s requirement, to time and to budget.
Brilliant in its speed of response, simplicity and reliability”. The app, combined with well-designed reports, makes it easy for decision makers. “Being able to call on reports which run complex business logic in a few seconds on a mobile device is a huge advantage.Head of IT, Graff Diamonds
Benefits
The Codestone SAP solution has completely changed reporting methods: from a request, complete and deliver process to instant access. The CEO, CFO, Chairman and Director of Merchandising now analyse information instantly on mobile devices twenty-four hours a day.
Easy and accurate monitoring of sales performance promotes rigorous best practice in sales engagement. There is no substitute for astute sales management, but this is supported by accurate, unequivocal evidence. The CEO spends much of his time at Graff locations around the world. Wherever he is, he has the information he needs at his fingertips at any time using his Mac, iPad or iPhone.
The business is able to decide quickly where to place stock based on data of where an item or range has sold well before. Industry knowledge is paramount but this is now supplemented by instant facts.
This is changing the way the business works, using technology to support global business growth.
Rather than waiting for finance or IT to provide business information, the business now has it whenever and wherever they want it.
Based on three of the reports alone, Graff is saving Finance and IT fifty-four man days per year by removing the need for the previous manual processes. Added to that, this information is now used more frequently than before, as it is so easily available.
When the business requires new information the analytic platform makes it easy to add this. For example delivering an amendment to a sales report to get a comparison of two previous years took an hour and a half. Or when the company was putting on an exhibition they were able to search instantly for existing customers with certain traits to target.