ABOUT HOCHLAND
Hochland Española, is one of the subsidiaries of the Hochland Group, a German company founded in 1927. With more than 5,000 employees, Hochland Group is one of the largest cheese producers in Europe, with a presence in Spain, Germany, France, Romania, Russia, Poland, while international subsidiaries include the United States and Australia.
OBJECTIVES
Hochland Spain was looking to initiate their Digital Transformation with a best-in-class Analytics solution to address near real-time advanced analytical capabilities to achieve the following strategic objectives:
Provide high-end analytical capabilities for different departments (Supply Chain, Commercial, Finance, Procurement, IT and others)
Ensure executive analytics with cross-organizational data can be used by the Executive Board for faster decision making
Ensure scalability to extend to new business areas and new technologies (S/4HANA, geographical or predictive analysis)
Become a reference for best-in-class Analytics for the entire Hochland Group
APPROACH
The Solution had to be developed for and adopted across all members of the company including Directors, Managers and team members. To achieve this, the project team involved many users from the beginning to unify criteria, consolidate requirements, align expectations, etc. to ultimately achieve buy-in from day 1.
The scope of the project was divided into different stages:
Installation and configuration of the architecture artefacts to create a scalable platform
Analysis and design of the solution by organizing workshops with each department to align expectations
Dashboard design to fulfill their analytical needs by creating a disruptive approach
Development of a solid data model that includes transactional and master data features
Training the business users to use the tools autonomously
TECHNOLOGY
The technology and solution decision was key as it had to provide Hochland the opportunity to implement a user friendly, customizable and completely cloud scalable and flexible insights platform:
Cloud Foundry – SAP HANA Service
Neo – SAP Web IDE Full-Stack
Soon BW, S4/HANA, JIRA…
Python - Creation of a scalable platform that adds multiple features
Architecture Overview
RESULTS
Increased Customer Service Level: operational procedures were reformulated and improved
Warehouse and Supply: business procedures improvement thanks to the near-real time analysis on how to reduce costs, times, etc
Invoice Accuracy: quicker and more optimized monthly closures
Procedures Optimization: better access to information is generating conversations between departments
Cross Company: more departments are being integrated within the solution (+ new sources: S4/HANA, BW, JIRA, Flat files…)
Predictive analytics: to take advantage of this solution with new data-driven innovation
Geographical capabilities: to identify hot and cold areas, trends of returns, etc
“Now we have reliable real-time information for better decision making. This solution has allowed us to review and redesign our company processes, making them more collaborative between departments.”
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“We have accelerated the process of transformation from analog to digital, by developing a more data-oriented mentality and in this way integrating systems with people.””
This advanced analytics project was awarded as a Top 5 Winner at SAP Quality Awards 2021 in the Digital Pioneer category.