In the current state of reporting process, the technology is limiting the needs of production reporting which is why there is a need for improving it. However it is not currently seen possible to investment in new technology or tool for reporting.
With the current tools it is however possible to increase the amount of data in databases and improve the automation in collecting it. With the help of PAS-Report, ERP-Browser and DEB the current system can be developed into right correction. It would also be possible to integrate all the databases of operative systems with the help of PIMS. However in my opinion wide integration would not add much value for reporting processes because PIMS lack of capability to process and analyze data. Also the master data determination of PIMS requires a lot of manual work and would make the administration of the system troublesome.
Also the further development of PAS is not going to give the wanted result because of its lack of analytical capabilities and integration between the operative system. However the PIMS and its tool DEB could be used for the performance
63 management purposes and to distribute the results of performance measurement for the employees. This task would only require the integration of the performance management data. The calculation of this can be done in PAS and it is only required to make the connection between PAS and PIMS. This is also possible in economical way because it can be done with the help of internal resources. With the usage of these tools the efficiency of production reporting and performance management system will increase.
When it comes into possible investment of new reporting tool, the role of the Nordzucker Group is playing important role in it. The investment calculations presented in this thesis showed that both of the investments were seen profitable.
If the support of the system can be accomplished from the concern, the lifetime and possible net savings of the new investment need to be considered more carefully. Until that more data from the production processes can be transferred into PAS databases and processed through PAS-Report.
64 6 SUMMARY
The data management, reporting and performance management of this thesis were limited into production processes and did not take into consideration other field of business. The theoretical framework was formed from theory about data and performance management and about the costs and benefits of data management.
Also methods for evaluation of investments were presented in the forms of investment calculations. Important part of the theoretical framework was the diamond framework of data management development. This framework is formed from organizational and technical frameworks that hold inside processes, data, roles and technology. The diamond framework for data management development was used more carefully to identify the most important factors of development project. Methods used in the empirical part of the thesis were case studies and participant observation.
In the current state of production reporting system the reporting process was handled mainly with spreadsheet reports by one person. The data of the reports was located in many different operational databases and a lot of manual work was required to perform from the reporting tasks. This made the reporting process complicated and increased the possibility of error when typing the data into reports. Also the performance measurement of processes was not systematic so it was be required to pay more attention on this. Because of the reporting process and used technology the quality of the data was a problem. There was some automation involved in the reporting process but it was necessary to increase it to make the process more efficient. According to the current state and needs of production reporting, the ideal state of reporting system was determined.
In the ideal state of reporting system the operative databases are integrated and the collection of operative data is automated. In the ideal state, production reporting is handled with dynamic tool that allows users to create its own reports from the available data. There are also some reporting templates which are focusing on the most important factors of the production processes like KPI’s. The performance
65 management of processes would also be part of the tool. To get better picture about the overall performance of the company, performance management of processes can also be expanded into other departments as well. The requirements for the ideal state were clearance of reporting processes and more efficient collection of data. It was also required to transform the data into databases where it can be used with some reporting tool, improve the automation of data collection and increase the importance of performance management.
Because of these factors and the available resources, development of current reporting system was focused on these factors. The clearance of reporting process was made mainly with the better usage of current tools PAS-Report, ERP and ERP-Browser. With the better usage of current tools and increased level of automation in data collection, the amount of manual work was reduced and the quality of the data was improved. Also the importance of performance measurement in reporting processes was increased by determining KPI’s. Because of these improvements the amount of work was estimated to be reduced for 2/5from the previous. Also simple investment calculations of NPV, ROI and IRR presented in chapter 4.6 were used to help to determine the ideal state of reporting system. The investment calculations showed that both of the development would be profitable. However, the risks of investing in new tool are higher because of the bigger initial investment, increased pay-back period and higher risk in reduction of yearly net savings. After all the investment calculation can only be used as a one method for determining the ideal state of reporting system.
The objectives of this thesis were what requirements effective performance management has for data management and performance of the company and how the data management of company should be managed to ensure effective reporting. It was also necessary to find out how the data management of the company effecting on the efficiency of it and how the ideal state of data management can be estimated. These questions were discussed more carefully in the conclusion part of this work. The summary about the conclusions can be seen from the table 13.
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Table 13. Summary about the research questions and answers
Research question Conclusion of the study
2. How should the data management of company be managed to ensure
3. How data management of company is effecting on the efficiency of it? company were seen very interesting. This was because in most of the BI cases are not taking this subject into further consideration. For further investigation it would be interesting to investigate more about the actual increased efficiency of production processes because of the better reporting and performance
67 management. This could be done by the measurement of reduced work or by the increased revenues as results from effective performance management of processes. Also it could be interested to investigate the actual costs and costs savings of reporting and data management development and calculate them with the help of investment calculations. This would require closer investigation of the actual reduction of work. This could be done for example by benchmarking the time used for reporting before and after the development project. In this way more information about the actual reduction of work would be received. And of course when doing investigation about subject it would always be interested to know the data management and reporting development project of other companies are executed in order to benchmark the results of this research for them.
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1 APPENDICES
APPENDIX 1. Proceeding of development project and the references of empirical study
10.4.2013 Video conference about ERP-Browser reporting tool 16.4.2013 Meeting with Savcor Group
23.4.2013 Current state of reporting (Raw materials) 2.5.2013 PAS-Report workshop
15.5.2013 Meeting with M-Files
19.6.2013 Reporting project meeting (Presenting current state)
13.8.2013 Reporting project meeting (Defining ideal state, objectives for reporting and performance management)
5.9.2013 Reporting project meeting (Defining ideal state, development plan and execution)
10.9.2013 PAS-Report workshop
26.9.2013 Reporting project meeting (Development plan and execution) 8.10.2013 Reporting project meeting (Execution)
11.10.2013 PAS workshop
15.10.2013 Video conference about ERP-Browser reporting tool – New features 25.10.2013 Reporting project meeting (Project status)
30.10.2013 PAS-Report workshop
31.10.2013 PIMS and other reporting systems (Senior data management specialist) 5–7.11.2013 PAS-Report Development application development course
11.11.2013 Meeting with Opentext
15.11.2013 Reporting project meeting (Execution)
27.11.2013 OEE calculations and usage of concern tools (Senior data management specialist)
12.12.2013 Reporting project meeting (Presenting results of current development and further development plan)