Case 18: Honam Petrochemical's Quest For Better Management Reports

List and describe the information requirements of HPC's new management system and what problems was the new system designed to solve?

Information requirements of new system involve identifying who needs what information, where, when and how. HRP needs reliable reports that are able to accurately measure management performance and provide useful, accurately measure management performance and provide useful, accurate information for increasing sales and reducing costs.
Executive wanted to see current data to get a real view of what was actually happening on the plant floor or in the sales office. Executive too need anytime access to the most timely data but they did not want to be overloaded with unnecessary data so they could focus on the "watch-up indicators" considered crucial to the business. U to the minute reports that they could see quickly on their desktops and the data can be access via the Web or their mobile devices. Enterprise wide data that could be accessed and shared easily across various business units and functions to support the company's expansion geographically and by product line.
HPC's existing systems provided managers with reports to guide their business decisions but in many cases the data in the reports were out of date and sanitized. Individual managers were processing and manipulating the data to make their departments "look better" to senior management. The report data were also somewhat stale and presented only on periodic basis.

To what extent were "people" problems affecting management decision making at HPC? How did the system's designers make the system more "people-friendly"?

In many cases, the existing HPC's systems provided out of date and "sanitized" data in the reports. Moreover the reports data are presented only a periodic basis. It really affecting the management decision making because the systems allow the individual managers to process and manipulate the data to make their departments "look better" to senior management. As a result the decision making are made based on the inaccurate, manipulated, inconsistent and untimely data (based on last quarter's number).
The issues from management, organization and technology that had to be addressed by the new system are

• Management - Develop new business process, monitoring the implementation of the new system, allocation of human and financial resources
• Organization - Conduct employees training, change of corporate culture
• Technology - Accessible of the data (via Web-based and mobile devices), determine the right set of reports and dashboards, extracting data from SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse

In order to determined the right set of reports and dashboards for HPC's executives, the information system team started by asking the executives to list existing reports and assess the usefulness of each report. Then highly intuitive Web-based user interface was created to make the system very accessible and required little training for users to use the system. The information system team visited various manufacturing plants to encourage users to start working with the system as well as had in depth discussions with executives about the system's benefits and how to use it.

What role did end users play in developing HPC's new system?

• User information requirements drive the entire system-building efforts
• End user must have sufficient control over the design process to ensure that the system reflects their business priorities and information needs, not the biases of technical staff
• End user of HPS's played role to help the project information systems department by providing them the existing report that they already used 

How did the project team make sure users were involved?

• Once HPC's project team determined the business intelligence tools for the solution, its focus turned to determined which data and reports were required by the company's 200 high-level users of the new system
• The team started by asking executives to list existing reports they were already receiving and to assess the usefulness of each
• The list was cut to more manageable size and the executives were asked if there were any additional reports or data from which their organization groups could benefit
• the project team make sure the users attended the training on how to use the new system or to access data and reports
• To encourage users to start working with the system, members of the information department conduct a discussion with the user about the benefits as well as how to use the new system
• Information system department also run campaigns to ensure that user are using the system with most effective way

What would have happened to the project if they had not done this?

• The users involved are very important in developing new system to make sure the information requirements or user's needs that was determined were fulfilled
• If it does not happen, the new system developed might fail and not achieved the management objective
• The project might be a "white elephant" and the result will be wasting time and money

What other steps did HPC take to make sure the system was successful?

• Phased approach - HPC used a phased approach in implementing the new system. HPC waited until the company was experiences with ERP software and confident in its data quality and its data collection and processing methods.
• Benchmarking - HPC CIO, Jong Pyo Kim also emphasized the important of benchmarking with other companies in the industry before designing and implementing an executive-facing system. Most manufacturing wi8II want to access to similar data and performance indicators

What types of systems-building methods and tools did HPC use for building its system?

• SAP Business Objects Dashboards - Is a drag-and drop visualization tool designed to create interactive analytics for powerful, personalized dashboards based on SAP's Business Objects intelligence platform. This software can be used for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management and provide self-service access to data from database and Excel spreadsheets
• SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence - Is an ad hoc query, reporting and analysis tool that is used to create queries or use existing reports, format retrieved information and perform analysis to understand trends and root causes

What were the benefits of the new system? 

• Timelier decisions - Reduces time needed to collect, process and track data for decision making, supports faster decisions with quicker and more thorough analyses, delivers timely information and various analysis to end users
• Personalized delivery of information - Provides option for Early Warning System of data alerts that allows differentiation and personalized delivery of information for executives, managers and front-line employees
• Measurable watch-up indicators across all business areas - Ensures consistency of information and establishes structure for global sharing of information. Increase business competitiveness through increased use of global information system
• Improved accessibility - Displays data via management cockpits, dashboards or widgets and provides unstructured details and analysis also leverages visual graphics to improve readability

How did it change the way Honam ran its business? How successful was this system solution?

• Executives no longer limited to sanitized, stale data in an outdated presentation format.
• Management discussions and each decisions are based on time, consistent and accurate company wide data
• The system is very successful and help to solve problems occur at HPC 
• The system reduces the time required to collect, process and track the data so executive decision making takes place more rapidly
• HPC's information system are now ready for global information-sharing as the company expands