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| Case Studies
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Caffè Nero/Cognos (September 2008)
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Caffè Nero Group Ltd was founded in 1997 and is currently the largest independent coffee retailer in the UK, with over 330
stores from Brighton to Aberdeen. As a growing business, Caffè Nero currently opens on average one store a week. Having created 330 branches over the
course of 10 years, the focus is on managing rapid growth and providing quality coffee to a growing customer base.
However, there was a lack of appropriate technology to analyse business performance and maximise successes. It is also
important to manage the Caffè Nero brand effectively as the company grows. To avoid a formulaic feel, the company needed
to identify customer trends in different regions and react accordingly by catering to specific customer preferences. However, as
the number of stores grew, this was becoming more difficult. Caffè Nero introduced an electronic point of sale (EPOS) system and started to look at rolling
out a business intelligence system to help understand trends and predict future sales. It turned to Tahola, a Cognos partner,
for support. Tahola suggested a Cognos business intelligence solution, which enabled the board to access reports showing company-wide
information.
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KCOM Group/Rinedata (August 2008)
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KCOM Group plc is a leading provider of integrated IT, communications, internet and telecommunications services to
businesses and selected consumer markets within the UK. Through its portfolio of ICT businesses, KCOM works with both
leading private enterprise customers and public sector organisations delivering solutions that include unified communications,
contact centre solutions, data management, applications integration and managed services.
The group’s rapid growth due to acquisitions and the successful penetration of new markets meant that it was quickly
outgrowing its group reporting software (Infor FDC) and needed to find a solution to its growing management and statutory
reporting requirements. KCOM appraised two options which would address and resolve this situation; the first was to upgrade to the latest software
version and the second was to invest in a new system. The selected
software vendor put KCOM in touch with Rinedata in order to help design and implement the new system.
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ACE/Rinedata (August 2008)
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The ACE European Group, an integral part of the global ACE Group of companies, comprises ACE Europe, ACE Global
Markets and ACE Tempest Re (Europe).
With an established presence in 19 countries and Freedom of Services permissions to operate in 30 EEA countries, ACE
European provides a range of tailored property and casualty, accident and health and personal lines insurance solutions for a
diverse range of clients.
The group’s steady growth had a direct impact on the diversity and complexity of the reporting requirements. The existing
portfolio of solutions used were no longer fit for purpose and could not satisfy the group’s ever increasing need for quality and
timely information. Rinedata has worked in the insurance arena for over 10 years and has exposure to all of the major BPM solution vendors. This
made the company a natural choice for ACE European to approach, not only for advice during the vendor evaluation exercise,
but to assist with the deployment of the chosen solution.
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UniCredit/Tagetik (June 2008)
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UniCredit Group is the sixth largest banking and financial services organisation in the world (the second in Europe) with a
network of 9,700 branches and strong local roots in 23 European countries as well as representative offices in 27 other
markets. In Europe, UniCredit is one of the leaders in terms of business size and can leverage on a unique strategic
positioning. UniCredit was looking for a technologically advanced and user-friendly web-based solution that included an Excel-based
interface for entering input data and displaying output data. Of the solutions available on the market, Tagetik CPM proved itself
to be the most flexible, with every stage of the consolidation process fully handled by the user with no need for the involvement
of either the Tagetik consultants or inhouse IT staff.
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Astaldi/Tagetik (June 2008)
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Founded in 1926, the Astaldi Group is one of the world’s leading construction companies. In its home territory, Italy, Astaldi is a
major player in the ‘general contractor’ market and a leading promoter of project financing initiatives related to large-scale civil
engineering projects.
Listed on the Stock Exchange since June 2002, the group employs approximately 6,000 people, is made up of 204 different
subsidiaries or companies, achieves annual sales of more than €1 billion, and has an order book that is currently worth almost
€7 billion. Astaldi is represented in 15 countries around the world with over 60% of its turnover generated outside of Italy. Astaldi required an evolved corporate performance management (CPM) system to manage its capital and cashflow planning
for individual client projects, monthly close processes, management reporting, budgeting and statutory consolidation in a single
solution and single database. Using Tagetik CPM, Astaldi is able to generate monthly project forecasts monitoring progress and profitability indicators.
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Southern Railway/COA Solutions – exclusive interview (March 2008)
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Southern provides train services in south London and between central London and the south coast, through East and West Sussex and Surrey, and parts of Kent and Hampshire. Last year it carried 120 million passengers. When Southern took over its current franchise from Connex in 2001, it inherited an under-performing business. Over the past six years, Southern has made the transition into a more efficient and well-regarded railway. The company realised that it needed to introduce a more effective management reporting structure that would allow information to be accessed centrally, rapidly and in a consistent way. It also needed to establish a range of key performance indicators (KPIs) so the company could effectively measure its performance against its business objectives. Southern chose People Analytics from COA Solutions.
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Marks & Spencer Money/Kognitio (October 2007)
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Marks & Spencer Financial Services markets a range of consumer financial products through its Marks & Spencer Money
(M&S Money) brand. As the financial services arm of Marks & Spencer, Marks & Spencer Money was the first company in the
UK to offer a store card to its customers and today its &MORE credit card has 2.5 million customers. In 2005, Marks & Spencer Money commissioned a major customer marketing project to successfully manage the transition of
their 2.5 million credit card customers to the new Chip & PIN credit cards. The challenge was to ensure that Marks & Spencer
Money did not experience high levels of churn as a result of credit card rationalisation, expected to be an outcome of the
industry’s move to Chip & PIN. Marks & Spencer Money also saw the exercise as a business opportunity to cross sell
additional financial services and strengthen brand loyalty. Marks & Spencer Money worked with data migration and business
intelligence specialist Kognitio to deliver the Chip & PIN initiative through the ‘Minerva’ customer intelligence platform that
Kognitio has managed as a hosted service since 2002.
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Entremont Alliance/SAP (September 2007)
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Entremont is a French dairy company in Savoie. Established in 1948, the primary trade of the company is manufacturing, refining
and conditioning French Emmental cheese. The group has also expanded operations to include the production of cheeses of
Controlled Label origin (AOC), such as the County and Beaufort, like the German Bavarian Emmental.
The company employs 4,100 people and has a sales turnover of €1.7 billion (year end 2005). During 2005 it sold 195,000 tons
of cheese and 315,000 tons of butter, liquid milk and dried milk. Entremont reviews its reporting and
prediction processes in three-year cycles. In April 2006, the company’s financial director examined the existing reporting and
budgeting processes, identifying several areas that could be significantly improved upon. The main goals for the improvement
efforts concentrated on simplifying and streamlining the reporting process, thereby reducing the time taken to produce budget
and financial reports. After
extensive research and evaluation of market-leading systems, Entremont selected SAP.
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Mizuho/SAP (May 2007)
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Established in December 2000 through the merger of Daichi – Kangyo Bank International, Fuji International Finance and the Industrial Bank of Japan, Mizuho International is the London-based securities and investment banking arm of one of the world’s largest banking groups, The Mizuho Financial Group. After experiencing challenges with its management and reporting system, including frequent system crashes, the heads of departments within Mizuho International Investment Bank determined that a reliable and robust performance management solution was required to increase operational efficiency. Mizuho International Investment Bank provided all potential performance management vendors with a detailed brief, outlining the challenges it had experienced, and asked each to demonstrate a solution. SAP was the only vendor to meet the rigorous criteria set out by Mizuho International Investment Bank, a selection process that took 12 months to complete.
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Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit/Kognitio (May 2007)
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The Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU), part of the Institute
of Astronomy at Cambridge University, is implementing technology that could accelerate some of astronomy’s
biggest future discoveries. Most catalogues are stored in databases and astronomers use SQL queries rather than optical devices to search the skies. But
because these catalogues can contain billions of objects and because the nature of the searching is quite ad hoc and
unpredictable, the process of searching can be very slow and tedious when using a conventional database. The biggest challenge for Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit was the time it took to make the telescope imaging data
available, data that the unit collects on the stars every night and which is forecast to grow daily volumes in excess of 500GB
per night. CASU turned to Kognitio WX2 and hardware provided by HP Flexible Computing Services (FCS).
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Litasco/OutlookSoft – exclusive interview (February 2007)
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Litasco is the international trading arm of Russian oil giant, LUKOIL, the second largest privately-owned oil company in the
world. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, it is becoming a major player in the global oil trading market, with subsidiary
offices in 10 countries in Europe, the Middle East, the US and Singapore. Litasco is a high-growth company. In the first half of 2006, its net profit rose by 55%. But it operates in a volatile
marketplace and in order to sustain its performance, it needs to monitor its financial position closely. Litasco has been
putting in place a best-practice corporate performance management system to ensure it complies with international
reporting standards and maximises its trading opportunities. It chose OutlookSoft because of its strong interface with Excel and its excellent user interface.
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Teleca/CODA (September 2006)
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Teleca is a listed international, R&D-focused
IT consultancy firm. Based in
Sweden, it develops and integrates
advanced software and IT solutions. The
company consists of about 3,500 experts
based in 17 countries, in Asia, Europe and
North America.
Teleca was in a situation where it needed to
upgrade its group consolidation system.
The company chose OCRA, from CODA,
for its flexibility and low cost. Now with over
70 users, Teleca uses OCRA for consolidation of book-keeping, reporting, budgeting and liquidity planning.
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Chubb Insurance/Informatica and Cognos – exclusive interview (January 2006)
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Chubb Insurance Company of Europe is part of The Chubb Corporation, a worldwide organisation providing
specialised insurance programmes to individuals and a range of businesses through independent brokers. Chubb
focuses on commercial property and casualty insurance and in insuring high-net-worth individuals. Good management information is the lifeblood of any insurer and Chubb developed its European Management
Information Repository (EMIR) to improve its management reporting. EMIR sources data from several different
databases in both Europe and the US. This is restructured and consolidated using Informatica’s extract, transform
and load (ETL) tool. Information is then presented using Cognos analysis and reporting tools, and the inhouse-developed
Kio tool.
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BMG/Sunopsis (February 2005)
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BMG is one of the world’s leading music companies with more than 200 labels in 42 countries. BMG also owns one of the world’s largest music publishing company. BMG is a division of Bertelsmann AG, one of the world’s leading media companies, and has an annual turnover of 16,8 billion euro (fiscal 2003). The Spider project – code name for the initiative to overhaul the interfaces between the distribution system and the downstream applications – had to address several key challenges. As is common with almost every IT initiative, cost and time to deployment were key factors. Plus, the complexity of the required data transformations, along with the need to deploy twenty instances of the new interfaces across Europe meant BMG had a tough challenge ahead. After conducting an extensive search, Sunopsis was chosen because it offered the best relevant functionality, at a price point that was compatible with the project budget.
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Johnson Matthey/Hyperion – exclusive interview (February 2005)
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Founded almost 200 years ago, Johnson Matthey is a chemicals manufacturer with around 7,500 staff and
operations in over 40 countries.
Its principal activities are the manufacture of autocatalysts and pollution control systems, catalysts and components
for fuel cells, pharmaceutical compounds, process catalysts and speciality chemicals; the refining, fabrication and
marketing of precious metals; and the manufacture of colours and coatings for the glass and ceramics industries.
Each Johnson Matthey division maintains its own autonomy and business culture. But the group also has centralised
budgetary control and conducts regular internal audits. The Colours & Coatings unit – which has adopted the Hyperion
Essbase and Executive Viewer database, reporting and business intelligence solution – manufactures a range of
chemicals and glazes used in the decoration of ceramic products, chiefly tableware, glass and tiles.
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