The project requirements consisted of having a standard adapted and parameterized market solution to become a part of the solution supplied by Grifols to its end clients, in other words, it had to be an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) solution that could be integrated as its own product in the Grifols offer.

After studying several alternatives, Grifols decided to purchase the global solution proposed by Apesoft, which included the products from the DataCycle Suite; DataCycle Reporting, as a generator, planner and distributor of reports in HTML, Pdf and Excel format, and DataCycle MyVision, that allows the access via web to reports, that are both pre-generated and executable on demand. It also included an optimization project of the databases and parameterization of the final reports needed.

The technological solution offered by Apesoft was the one that best fitted Grifols needs and requirements, above all for its simplicity of usage, quick start up, low training costs, minimum technological impact for the end user and capacity for generating reports in multiple formats such as Html, Pdf and Excel, amongst other features and advantages. It must also be pointed out that the new solution had to fulfil a basic requirement for Grifols: It needed an agile software mechanism to provide a quick response to all of its clients. In this sense, the project proposed by Apesoft did not include any custom designs, and was completely based on the standard DataCycle suite products, which enabled significant maintenance cost savings. Furthermore, Apesoft’s development and support center is based in Spain, very near to the client, and could therefore respond really quickly to any requirement or request from Grifols.

The start up was planned starting a pilot test in two strategic hospitals given their volume and complexity, one in Barcelona and the other in Madrid. When this first phase of the project was successfully finished, the deployment of the solution started in other hospitals who already have Hospital Logistics solutions, which underlines the excellent integration of the Apesoft solution with the aforementioned Grifols’ solutions.

Grifols distributes all this technology under its own trademark, Global Analyst® Pro, to make it more accessible to the hospital sector and to give it the added value needed to associate it correctly to the Hospital Logistics solutions supplied by the multinational.

Faced with the change in its Commercial Information System, Font Vella needed to incorporate a new solution to resolve the Reporting needs of the company’s Commercial area. It looked to cover the need with a tool similar to the one they already had, but which provided new functions, helping them to become more autonomous when making any changes, and above all, enabling off-line information analysis.

The autonomy in the administration, design and automation of the generation and distribution of the reports in Excel, the capacity for being able to analyse the information without the need for being connected to any system, together with a very reasonable general solution cost, were the deciding factors when opting for DataCycle Reporting.

Thanks to ApeSoft’s DataCycle Reporting solution, Aguas Font Vella y Lanjarón SA’s sales force, made up of around 100 sales reps in 5 delegations, receives sales reports with different levels of detail, that provide them with sales analyses by client, product and category, and other analytical dimensions. In this way the solution helps to optimize their activity and decision making.

If you would like to receive information on this solution, send us an email to marketing@apesoft.com

Emergia Customer Care, a Spanish multinational, pioneer in Customer Care Strategic Consultancy and Integral BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) Services for the Spanish speaking worldwide market, has committed itself to the DataCycle Reporting and DataCycle Planning solutions to improve the company’s reporting and budgeting processes.

The introduction of the two solutions has been divided into two phases. In a first phase the reporting project will be tackled, which will consist of the construction of a data warehouse to import and collect the information from the company’s databases and in the design of reports that consult this data. In the second phase the DataCycle Planning solution start-up project will be carried out, the objective of which is to automate the budget preparation and tracking process in Emergia.

With the introduction of these two new solutions, Emergia Customer Care will be able to optimize the company’s reporting, thanks to the automated generation of all types of reports, and strengthen its budgetary process, thanks to the centralization of the budgetary information, via web and Excel as an end user interface, safely in a specific database, allowing for having absolute control on all the process and carrying out periodic checks on it.

About Emergia Customer Care

Emergia with headquarters in Barcelona and Madrid, and multiple Virtual Contact Centers located in Europe and Latin America (Colombia, Chile, Ecuador), has become consolidated as the multinational of reference in delocalization competing with the leading consultancy companies. It promotes a fast response to market and client needs on incorporating new relationship models for its globalised Outsourcing and Customer Service services, and contributing, thanks to the improvement in service levels, to demonstrating its commitment to innovation and differentiation in processes and procedures for its clients, large corporations and entities in multiple sectors. Corporación Financiera Valora has a shareholding in this company.

SITUATION

Carandini has information in two non-linked databases. On the one hand, a SQL Server with its own CRM management system, customized for managing the commercial area. On the other hand, it has its own AS-400 and ERP for the operating and financial management.

The objective was to exploit the information of the two platforms to keep all the departments informed.

The main challenges faced were:

• they had too much information fed into the system and this gave them little visibility of the business;
• the database queries were complicated and they had difficulties maintaining the information,
• they lost a lot of time formatting and preparing reports in Excel format,
• there were a lot of departments totally unaware about their management

SOLUTION

To resolve the entire reporting problem, they started a tool assessment process. Out of all the tools, they assessed, for example, Crystal Reports or Hyperion; they found that most of them involved a lot of parameterization making the tool unfeasible for Carandini. Furthermore, another barrier for making this decision had to do with the price, which in some cases entailed a too pricey investment.

According to Sergi Muñoz, Carandini’s Director of Controlling, the key reasons that lead them to chose the DataCycle Reporting solution were ( in order of importance):

• Having the user interface in Excel considerably minimizes the training costs for all the users, only having to focus on the training of a very small group (designers and administrator). Furthermore, the fact that the user interface is in Excel also greatly minimizes the technological impact when implementing a new tool in the company and contributes to the acceptance of the new system.
• Easy parameterization
• Price
• Immediate implementation
• Results straight away

In its implementation, the DataCycle Reporting solution has been taken to the majority of the organization’s departments: Commercial, Finance, Operations, Controlling and IT. Amongst all the reports that have been automated, the following can be highlighted: order input and output, warnings on critical orders, order portfolio status, sales statistics for the commercial area, budget control reports or effects portfolio control reports, amongst many others.

DataCycle Reporting provided them for example with these improvements:

Account Management: When an invoice has exceeded the due date, the system sends, automatically, a report that alerts the rep that the client has not paid it yet. Before there was only proof in the Finance Dept., and now the reps can help the Finance Dept. to reclaim payments from their clients and they are aware of a fact that they did not know before, and furthermore can help them in negotiations.

BENEFITS

Thanks to DataCycle Reporting, Carandini has achieved significant time savings by generating the reporting, automatic information introduction by department and by employee and a total alignment in the objective control needs and priorities between departments.

In short, these are some of the benefits the solution has provided the company with:

Savings in communication times, thanks to the distribution of automated reports that the users directly receive in their electronic mail.

It improves the time for responding to any problem, with the automated distribution of reports and alerts that alert the users of deviations and unexpected events.

Unification of information criteria. Before, there could be different results from the same information. Now DataCycle Reporting integrates the data from all the systems in Excel templates in an automated way ensuring that the information the users receive is homogeneous.

The island of “privileged” information have been broken, thanks to the capacity for spreading the information en masse and everybody is informed of the management of their area, whilst before only a small group of persons had the information.

Increase in the quality of information entered in the system.

CONCLUSIONS

According to Sergi Muñoz, Carandini Director of Controlling: “The improvement in the management has been so significant that we consider not receiving information for more than three days a very critical situation”

With a few exceptions, building and finishing a Balance Scorecard during processes of change is a good decision. We can find the reason for this in the current definition of what a Balance Scorecard is and what it is used for:

A Balance Scorecard:

1. Is a management tool

2. It is integrated with strategic planning, with the decision processes and performance analysis of a company.

3. It is used to monitor the execution of strategic and operating plans

4. Through the tracking of key objectives, projects and indicators

The Balance Scorecard contemplates several perspectives of the plan to be carried out: (1) Financial, (2) Market and clients (3) Internal business processes (4), their competences and knowledge (5) Our current business culture (6) Our information systems, (7) The projects necessary for activating the change, (8) The results expected from this change, (9) The partial intermediate objectives during the change.

Therefore, A Balance Scorecard is a tool for executing the change and measuring its progress. We only have to define that the plans the Balance Scorecard manages be precisely the change plans. The definition process of an Balance Scorecard requires following a very methodical and logical structure, where the important key points are set and very healthy discussions are held on the details of the execution, in other words a theoretical plan will be converted into practicable plan for the Company’s present reality.

From the four typical perspectives from the Kaplan and Norton model in a strategy map, the fourth is normally called “Learning and Growth Perspective”, “Impulse Perspective” or “Potentials Perspective” amongst other names and is the most important perspective, as they are foundations on which all the strategy are based on. It is structured in:

I. Human Capital: The team, their skills, motivation, and knowledge and talent we have.

II. Information Capital The information the people have available for working with. Often related to IT and technology.

III. Organizational Capital: The organizational processes we have, leadership, habits, etc.

Well then, it is in the first point “Human Capital” that the competences play an important role. We will first see that it is not necessary to assess the Human Capital of all the company (that will be HR’s job). What we are really interested in is seeing which work post families are relevant for the strategy we are defining. Given a specific strategy, we can normally find 3 or 4 large families, representing the key part of all the available HR. They could be for example: sales team, marketing, customer services and technical service, in a hypothetical customer oriented strategy.

Once the families of strategic posts have been detected, which competences are needed are assessed, either because we do not have them or because we do and must promote them.

What is a competence? Competence management tries to define what behaviours and skills make a person better in their job to obtain business objectives. These behaviours or skills are called competences.

To continue this example, perhaps due to a specific growth strategy, the sales force:

1. Were lacking analytical capacity

2. Did not have a method

3. Did not have communication with other work teams

The second competence (method) is found in a low or inexistent level and we must therefore introduce it. The first and third competences must be promoted, in other words, the competences have levels and we can define: which level currently exists, which level is necessary and therefore the gap that needs to be covered. The grading is typically between 3 and 5 levels, for example: (1) Inexistent (2) low (3) medium (4) good and (5) excellent. It should be pointed out that it is important to describe a competence properly, as well as the different levels we are talking about, with sufficient examples and in writing, so that people are clear about what we expect from them. The way to strengthen competences is different and includes such broad tools as coaching and training.

Competences make people become a member of the strategy and show them that to obtain their objectives they must improve some skills, habits and behaviours . Competence management is a project related to the Balance Scorecard in the sense that it develops strategic competences that are needed to carry out the strategy and it offers very interesting benefits such as communicating to people what is expected from them, help to promote them, creating a defined and positive framework to discuss how to improve, and relates all of this with strategic plans.

We hear often that one of the risks of this type of projects is that they flag in time, and the Balance Scorecard often becomes just another report in the company’s reporting. It is important to put the Balance Scorecard report in a continuous use and improvement process, fully integrated with other existing processes in the company such as strategic planning, operative planning, reporting and management control, regular operation with board of directors tracking meeting, continuous improvement, etc.

In our case, when we finish the technological implementation, we tackle the consultancy to determine a usage policy that fits the company’s modus operandi. We establish a process with three different phases:

• Analysis phase (understanding)
• Discussion phase (decision approval)
• Improvement (decision execution)

The first phase includes the individual analysis by each head and level, of their Balance Scorecard, looking at trends, red lights and projects with delay. The result is a series of comments on the situation observed and list of improvement actions.

The second phase is the monthly tracking meeting, organised by roles taken on by the attendants during the meeting and a structured improvement presentation and approval process.

The third phase is the planning and execution of the decisions taken, the tracking of which is carried out in the following monthly meeting.

Whether in the strategy formulation process or in the process of communication to the company, a very simple conceptual tool exists to assist in both cases: strategy maps. They are very simple to understand diagrams that draw the strategic objectives and the causal relationships between them, in other words, which objectives we must first promote to then be able to promote other objectives. They are diagrams that effectively communicate the structure of a strategy and furthermore force the team defining the strategy to find answers that prove that the strategy is consistent and realistic.

The strategy map shows strategic objectives such as:

1- Increase sales

2- Increase distributors

3- Efficient visit plan execution

4- Keep target clients

5- Reduce order processing time

6- Efficient execution of the strategic system plan

And these objectives classified in 4 big areas or perspectives on the diagram:

1- At the top, we have the Financial perspective, with the objectives related to the economic results we want to obtain, EBITDAs, Sales, Expenses ... and in some way reflects the economic value we offer the company’s shareholders.

2- Just underneath, we have the Customer perspective, with all the objectives related to client winning, retention, cross-selling, satisfaction,... and furthermore clearly defines the value proposal to the client, in other words, why are they going to buy from us or continue to buy (we have already talked about the value proposal in another bulletin).

3- Underneath, we find the Internal Business Processes perspective, with all the objectives that when attained will realize the client’s perspective. They are internal process objectives such as operations, commercial processes, marketing, R&D…

4- Finally, we have the Learning and Growth perspective that expresses if we have sufficient human capital, information and technology capital, and organizational capital to carry out the previous three perspectives.

Finally, we must add that the strategy map has become one of the most important tools to detail and execute a strategy, and it often forms part of a Balance Scorecard project, where the map is defined first and then its tracking is automated with indicators.

This type of meeting is more or less structured depending on the company’s business culture and the best use of the time and costs of bringing together executives of this level is a challenge that not all companies manage to do successfully.

One of the most effective mechanisms to structure the content of a steering committee’s meetings is a Balance Scorecard, and below we will see why.

Let us assume a company with an implemented Balance Scorecard. This means that it has a group of strategic objectives defined and assigned to several members of the steering committee, each measurable through one or more indicators and backed up by one or more improvement projects, also called initiatives. For example, the strategic objective “Grow in the occasional tourist market” is assigned to the “Commercial Director”, is measured with the “Sales in the occasional tourist market” and has two initiatives that back up this objective: (1) Study of more innovating promotions in the occasional tourist market (2) Search for 10 products for the occasional tourist market.

In this company, the Balance Scorecard is generated on the 12^th day of every month, and the members of the steering committee receive an email inviting them to analyse that month’s Balance Scorecard (and the annual trend) and to analyse the performance of the strategic objectives each one has assigned. So that each one can prepare the analysis with comments on the situation and the corrective actions they plan to carry out. This individual preparation helps to ease the steering committee meeting that will be held a few days later.

In this example, the company usually holds the steering committee meeting on the third Thursday of every month, between the 16 and 21 of each month. This meeting is carried out in a structured way with the presentation of each of the members of the steering committee on the status of their strategic objectives and the corrective plans they propose. In these meetings, in addition to the presenters who will always have the same order of intervention and have a fixed presentation time, there is usually the formal role of the secretary and president. The secretary mainly has two objectives: (1) Document all the meeting and write the subsequent minutes and (2) Facilitate the compliance of the time periodically, announcing the time left in each intervention. The president, who is normally the Managing Director, is in charge of (1) Understanding and clearing up the situation the strategic objectives are in and (2) Reach a consensus on the corrective actions to be carried out and which are presented by each member of the steering committee, and their priorities.

When it is a large company, it has many decision levels and there may be several Balance Scorecards from top to bottom, for example a main one for the steering committee and a Balance Scorecard for each of the divisions and/or departments. The “Balance Scorecard tracking committee” meetings are therefore held first in each division, in order to subsequently carry out the steering committee tracking meeting. The scaling of problems and decisions from top to bottom is so helped, at the same time as preparing the steering committee even better as each member can have attended the Balance Scorecard tracking meeting with their area previously.

There is no other way to carry out a strategy, and therefore a group of strategic objectives, than making it progress daily, weekly, monthly, and therefore it is necessary that the normal analysis and decision making work be aligned with this strategy. The way for the strategy to represent the company’s reality is for the problems and challenges each member of the steering committee faces to be reflected in it, and for these matters to be treated in a detailed and structured manner every month. This operating model really helps to improve the exploitation of the executive’s time, to make better decisions and develop a culture of commitment-a tremendously satisfactory performance for the people and a high performance for the company.