Publishing Success

As

part of a major IT initiative, Macmillan India has implemented SAP R/3 from

January 2002 onward. The project was completed in four-and-a-half months,

considered to be a record during that point of time. Macmillan's other IT

initiatives include connecting 25 locations throughout India via 64Kbps IP-VPN

through an ISP (currently HCL Infinet), and the last mile via a 512Kbps leased

line at Chennai.

All applications are serviced through a single datacenter located in Chennai.

The SAP BW has enhanced building on BI, leading to quicker information delivery

to its business strategists. It provided a single window for information

delivery as well. During the implementation of the technology, a flexible,

faster reporting tool was thought to be the solution, which should not disturb

the performance of the transaction processing systems based on SAP R/3. Post

implementation, the ERP service was not hampered.

Before the implementation of SAP BW, processes were tightly controlled and

trustworthy data were collected. However, the strategic teams were more

dependent on the business process operator to produce answers from the business

processes. This



led to distortion of information and strategic decisions contained some
assumptions.

Post implementation, Macmillan's strategists were able to use BI tools and

analyze data in their own way. The tool significantly addressed the needs of

unstructured information. A good scope has thus been introduced to reduce the

level of assumption content in the decision-making process.