Danisco: better business intelligence by a partner that goes beyond

As Director of Danisco’s Enterprise Performance Management team, Linda Ralleca is instrumental in transforming data to reliable information, and in delivering it to management and other key decision makers within the 13.7 billion Danish kroner company, headquartered in Denmark and internationally present in 40 countries.

”It is vital to our business that we continuously strive to achieve leaner structures and standardized services and processes across the Danisco organisation”, states Linda Ralleca.

Being a world leader in food ingredients, enzymes and bio-based solutions, Danisco is no stranger to the term ’good is not good enough’. Using nature’s own materials, science and the knowledge of its more than 6,800 employees, Danisco continues to exceed expectations when designing and delivering bio-based ingredients that meet market demands for healthier and safer products.

Complexity and lack of trust in data

In Danisco’s continuous search to reduce footprint complexity, the hypothesis arose that by bringing business intelligence closer to the business, Linda Ralleca’s team would learn to better understand business needs and tailor sustainable solutions accordingly.

In looking to understand the underlying reasons behind the continuous use of spread sheets and manually produced presentations when reporting on the compliance between department KPIs and overall company strategy and goals – rather than deploying the BI solutions for performance management – Linda Ralleca and her team initiated a strategy exercise with the business. There were two major findings:

“First, our internal surveys not only showed that our users perceived BI and the supporting solutions to be too complex. They also gave a clear picture of lack of trust and consistency in the data extracted, as well as a high level of frustration due to much time spent in verifying and correcting”.

“Secondly, they wanted information to be more accessible, easy to use and easy to find. Being ‘an SAP shop’, we have always relied on the SAP BW toolset to deliver business intelligence solutions to our users. There should be no doubt that it is very powerful and sophisticated in delivering information, but it is also complex and primarily targeted analysts, controllers, and advanced users. It is not really suited for management reporting and visualization”, Linda Ralleca says.

Choosing SAP BusinessObjects and Infotrust

“Obviously, we could do better. To address the first issue, we embarked on a number of process, data, and infrastructure improvements that have resulted in high quality data with better performance”.

“To address the second issue, we decided to simplify what we deliver by emphasizing ease of use and fast performance in both our front-end tool and back-end platform. We scanned the market, selecting a total of sixteen different tools of which we opted for SAP BusinessObjects”, says Linda Ralleca, after which the hunt began for a partner that could pave the way for a worldwide roll-out:

“We did not have any in-house SAP BusinessObjects competencies at the time, and although discovering that there are a lot of resources on the Danish consultancy market within the field, we also noted that very few have the in-depth expertise needed to serve a company such as ours. Infotrust does, because they have all-round expertise in all-round SAP BusinessObjects and its integration with SAP BW. As such, they provide the full package: A full-scale partnership as well as the full Enterprise Suite – all from just one vendor”, Linda Ralleca explains.

Reliable information to those who need it

“In broadening the use of business intelligence within the Danisco organisation, and bringing data visualisation tools to both management and key decision makers, Infotrust work as ‘our SAP BusinessObjects office’, so to speak. We rely on them to understand what needs to be delivered – both in terms of solution development and infrastructure – and they allow us to push relevant information closer to those who need it”.

“From start-up in autumn 2010 to go-live in December of that same year, they have taken us from manual Excel spread sheets and PowerPoint reporting to automatic business intelligence delivery through a web browser. They have helped us prove to our users that trustworthy data and actionable information need not be further away than a click”.

Infotrust as trusted advisor

And the feedback from the users is, indeed, positive:

“They want more. And they will get more”, Linda Ralleca smiles. “Already in March 2011, we will deliver 23 solutions in just one go, reaching a broader group of people and triggering a number of new projects”.

“Infotrust has been our partner and trusted advisor throughout the process, and they have diligently and relentlessly worked with us – not only to develop the solutions and implement the infrastructure, but also to focus on knowledge transfer, allowing us to build up our own skill set. They have dramatically increased the responsiveness of our BI team to delivering key business value to Danisco, and there is no doubt in my mind that we chose the right partner. I rely on them as I do on our own employees”, concludes Linda Ralleca, Danisco’s Enterprise Performance Management Director.