Categorization of Knowledge. – Project topics materials

Get Complete Project Material File(s) Now! »

Empirical Findings

In this part of the study we will present the empirical findings. All information from the in- terviews will not be presented since the introduction questions are not relevant for the study. The main focus in this chapter is to cover the interview questions (Appendix 1) re- lated to our research questions and the purpose of our report. We have conducted four in- terviews. Two interviews were conducted with system owners and the other two were con- ducted with people who work with IT management. Relevant part of the interviews will be presented below. After three of the interviews we got the opportunity to see the systems used and can therefore use this experience in our conclusion and analysis since we consider this as a relevant part of the empirical findings.

Husqvarna AB

Husqvarna offers products for consumers and professionals within three main product ar- eas: forestry, lawn and garden, and construction. With a presence in over 100 countries, Husqvarna employs more than 11,400 people world-wide. Their IT department, located in both Sweden and the US, is responsible for Husqvarna’s IT in every operating area throughout the entire organization. IT is divided in application areas with global responsi- bility for that application or concept. Huqvarna uses a “best of breed” strategy and buys the system they think will fit the organization’s needs best.
BI is nothing new in the Husqvarna organization. As one of the first organizations in Swe- den, Husqvarna started working with extraction of operational data from different sources and systems to an environment optimized for analysis, the foundation of BI. The IT de- partment first discovered the BI concept and saw the potential business value. They dem- onstrated it to a group of business users who became interested and wanted it imple- mented. Dorthé explains that they in the early stages focused on improving and streamlin- ing supply chain processes, since these processes use units and quantities which are less complicated to deal with. The next step was to include financial processes in their BI solu- tion, a more complex task with more factors to consider such as exact definitions of finan- cial measures, fluctuating currencies, and bonuses for sales people. “Providing decision makers with incorrect numbers that they use in their analysis and decision making is extremely dangerous” Win- blad explains. Dorthé points out that defining and agreeing on financial measures and KPIs is time-consuming and involves people all across the organization. Today, the most fre- quent users of their BI system are executives and controllers who use BI for strategic deci- sion making. However, BI is also used in different supply chain functions to analyze optimal replenishment levels.
Further, Dorthé explains that BI has changed Husqvarna’s business model. Before the BI system was implemented, reports were created throughout the organizations, in the facto- ries and sales companies, a manual process that in some cases took up to three months to complete. Now, this data is refreshed once a day and some data is refreshed as many as seven times daily. Production line managers have even expressed their wishes for expand- ing the solution to show real-time data. Winblad claims that this is not needed in most situ- ations. By analyzing financial information in the DW, top management gets a full picture of how well different sales companies and branches perform. This makes it easier to help local branches and sales managers focus on certain areas, countries, or products with higher profitability. Using their BI system Husqvarna’s executives can now follow long-term trends, which earlier was impossible.
One of the main objectives with Husqvarna’s BI investment was to get everyone to “speak the same language”. To be able to implement BI, sales companies world-wide were forced to decide on item codes. Earlier, the same item code could be used for a chain saw in one country and a lawn mower in another, which made item-level audits impossible and the de- cision support consisted of high level summaries without any ability to show details, Dorthé explains.
Dorthé claims that the information generated in the BI is correct, current, and relevant. However, both Dorthé and Winblad agree that the information from the BI will never meet everyone’s needs. “IT systems evolve and change and business users have new KPIs to track”, Winblad explains.
Dorthé states that BI is limited to gather and show information but never make decisions for the user. The outcome depends on the person making the decision. “The more useful information you have access to, the higher it the probability for making a better decision” Dorthé claims.
Husqvarna’s strategy is not to push data and reports to the business users using email, even though this functionality exists. Instead, they want users to use the system themselves to get the information they need in their job and make them aware of additional tools for deeper analysis. Dorthé claims that the BI system is used frequently and it has received great appreciation from the user community. One reason might be that the user friendly in- terface. “In 10 years, BI is probably used by everyone throughout the entire organization”, Dorthé says.

READ Driving Forces and Barriers for Value-Added Services

Fläkt Woods AB

Fläkt Woods is a global supplier of air solutions. They employ more than 3,000 people and have a local presence in 95 countries. In their Jönköping branch, Fläkt Woods has used computers in their business since the 1970s, mostly Manufacturing Planning Systems (MPS). A couple of years ago they started seeing a need for BI in their organization.
Sjögren explains how business users needed help from IT or employees with advanced programming skills to run reports. The information was available in their system but it could only be accessed using SQL programming which most business users did not know.
Also, having different users accessing data in the database without an appropriate user in- terface was not the best solutions since mistakes could easily be made in live production data. The production systems also predicted an increase in performance if the data was moved outside the system, into a DW, to facilitate data analysis. A BI system based on Mi- crosoft’s tools was implemented in the Swedish organization.

1 Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Problem Discussion
1.3 Purpose.
1.4 Problem Delimitation .
1.5 Interested Parties
1.6 Positioning
1.7 Definitions
2 Method.
2.1 Categorization of Knowledge.
2.2 Method Approach
2.2.1 Qualitative and Quantitative Research
2.3 Data Collection
2.4 Selection of Respondents.
2.5 Method Validatio
3 Frame of Reference .
3.1 Business Intelligence.
3.2 Decision Making Processes .
4 Empirical Findings
4.1 Husqvarna AB .
4.2 Fläkt Woods AB
4.3 Myresjöhus AB
4.4 Kinnarps A
4.5 Summary of Empirical Findings.
5 Analysis
5.1 Decision Support .
5.2 Decision Making Processes .
6 Conclusions .
7 Final Discussion
References