Think of Audi and many of us think of the phrase “Vorsprung durch Technik”. It describes the brand’s sportiness, sophistication and progressiveness. The only thing it doesn’t capture, perhaps, is the precision that goes into the manufacturing process. It’s impressive stuff.
Each vehicle Audi produces has a budget, including transportation costs, attached to it. You can’t do these budget calculations easily. You need sophisticated systems to analyse the cost data and produce the reports. What’s more, there’s always the risk of errors creeping in, particularly if the systems lack transparency or involve a lot of manual work. Audi understood these challenges well when it engaged with Dell Consulting Services. The consulting team – which had worked with Audi before − had the task of rolling out SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence 7.0 for the Audi Logistics Controlling department in Germany.
There were some challenges along the way, but that’s hardly surprising with a project of this size. The Dell consultants had to map individual aggregation levels and heavy computation logic for a ‘euro per vehicle’ figure to name one. Anyhow, they did it despite the complexity of the work, and the department found itself with a new, more effective system.
Today, department personnel have additional time to spend on data analysis rather than wasting time on data entry. Feedback has included comments concerning the system’s stability and the intuitiveness of the interface. The great news for Audi is that it has a solution that’s really making a difference to performance. Simply put, employees are delivering budget reports around 20 per cent faster. I wonder if it’s time to expand that familiar Audi phrase?
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