Sewing in analytics to fan growth

A recent McKinsey study has found that fully exploiting data and analytics requires three capabilities. First, companies must be able to choose the right data and manage multiple data sources. Second, they need the capability to build advanced models that turn the data into insights. Third and most critical, management must undertake a transformational-change program so that the insights translate into effective action.

In essence, all the above capabilities were what USHA International sought to undertake when it felt the dire need of transforming its data-database-analytics cycle into translating insights for effective and faster action. Leading the transformation was Subodh Dubey, senior VP and group CIO, USHA International.

From sewing machines to ceiling fans, for which it is a household name in India, USHA, in a bid to continue building on its success, was looking at significantly improving its reporting and analytics at its multiple offices across India, multiple functions, sales, marketing etc. Further, its decade long relationship with SAP, was extended to SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse, powered by SAP HANA to enable faster data analysis.

Challenges USHA was Facing

USHA was using another traditional database, and realized that it was not retrieving analytical results fast enough. "When we analyzed our traditional database, we found that there are lot of adoption issues from the user side and there was no use of business intelligence (BI) in the organization, even after implementing BI for two to two and a half years." reveals Dubey.

There were two main issues-one being navigation and time consumption. Users were comfortable to create reports in excel instead of extracting the data from BI, because it was taking too time consuming for getting those analytical data. So, the user would download data from the SAP Transaction system, and then juggle in excel and then used these to project data to the management. This system according to the users was much more easier and faster than the report which you get from BI.

Secondly, to have an all-India perspective of sales etc, users had to sort particular location-wise reports or SKUs perspective. The system would usually take an hour, or in some cases seven to eight hours, apart from being hanged.

Thus being a sales organization, USHA wanted to have real-time information. So these were the main reasons we identified and that was the trigger to switch to HANA. "We were looking at something faster for data retrieval and that too if not real time, at least near-real-time information," adds Dubey.

 

Integrating it into the Mainstream

Being aware of some innovations that SAP had brought about, USHA and SAP worked out a plan, on looking at HANA as an architectural analytical solution. SAP also worked with it to build a business case-improving speed and decision making processes that would help in growth of the organization's businesses.

The implementation of the new system at USHA took no longer than three months and the new process went live in two weeks time. This smooth process was actually because USHA already had BI in place, and so it was only more of data migration, a case of tuning to the existing reports that are developed on SAP BI. Roughly about 300 specific users were extensively trained for SAP HANA-with around 70-72 training sessions across India when it went live. USHA spent around `1 crore on the whole project.

Improvement in Data Usage

Expecting a better RoI with HANA usage, Dubey, reiterates the value add that is now getting on the table post the implementation, "We are now witnessing several changes, one is the faster retrieving of data, second being the speed of uploading and thirdly, extracting reports of pan-India easily. The increased usage of BI has helped in 75-80% utilization of HANA, showing productivity in terms of creating reports and the time consumption has reduced tremendously. This has given the user a comfort level and the confidence from data point of view."

The inventory data was not known to Usha's business unit head or CEO until the status of the year-old inventory that was worth `40 crore, and within three months time, it went down to `20 crore because the visibility was now available and everyone created a liquidating plan further. And now, the complete inventory which was lying for more than a year has been liquidated or sold.

Also, the time and effort taken by the 300 users-all the main beneficiaries are from the supply chain, sales and procurement divisions-analysis showed that on a weekly basis they used to put in around 13-14 hours to prepare the data reports and which was reduced to two hours weekly. All the RoI has been mapped since March 2012 during which HANA was implemented.