Hillman Group, Avnet and Quaker Chemical: Process Transformation through Business Intelligence Deployments

Team 1
Abhishek Ganesh Aluri Bhavya George Abraham Manoj Kumar . M Sivakumar. V

Hillman Group
CIO Jim Honerkamp Manufacturer and distributor of engraving technologies and hardware. ($380million)
PetScribe Quick-Tag VetScribe

BI is implemented to process and integrate information. The benefits of BI was not evident initially.

Avnet
CIO Steve Phillips Computer systems, component and embedded subsystems manufacturer. Phillips rolled BI to 2000 sales people. Avnets sales team is flexible and can adapt to the information.

Quaker Chemical
CIO Irving Tyler Used BI to manage accounts receivable. It analyzed historical payments, balances and transactions of a customer. With the help of BI, collection managers no longer had to keep track of information manually.

Question 1
What are the business benefits of BI deployments such as those implemented by Avnet and Quaker Chemical? What roles do data and business processes play in achieving those benefits?

Benefits
Avnet
Smarter Identification of customers Improving the effectiveness of the sales team. To keep track of customers. Generate reports on shipments.

Quaker Chemical
They were able to improve accounts receivable collection. Transforming from manual maintenance to electronic maintenance.

Question 2
What are the main challenges to change of mindset required to extend BI tools beyond mere reporting? Use examples from the case to illustrate your answer.

Challenges faced
Not immediately effective. Sharing of information. Companies need to understand all activities that make up a business process. Training given to the employees will be critical.

Question 3
Both Avnet and Quaker chemical implemented systems and processes that affect the practices of their sales people. In which way did the latter benefit from these new implementations. How important was their buy in to the success of these projects?

Importance and Benefits

It has provided Quaker Chemicals with better competitive advantage. Quaker has benefitted through better cash management after the implementation of BI. Helps in data mining of accounts receivable. Generates reports for specific purpose . Extracts Accounts receivable info from transaction system Collection Managers wouldnt have to collect information manually.

THANK YOU