Canon is a world leader in imaging products and solutions for digital home and office environments, including digital imaging devices, digital and analog copiers, image filing systems, printers, fax machines, bubble jet printers, scanners, cameras, video cameras, binoculars and calculators. Canon also provides complete network solutions, from IT consulting to installation of voice/data networks, including computers and telephone systems.
Managing the operations of Canon UK calls for careful attention to detail. The challenge for managers was to master the details and be able to respond to changing conditions appropriately and quickly.
Analysts formerly had to gather information from different sources and then merge and manipulate the data in Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheets. This took up a large amount of their time. Now, they are using business intelligence solutions from SPSS for a range of applications, the first of which was called MIDAS, to address the question, Must I Do Another Spreadsheet?
Canon wanted to drastically reduce the time required to produce management reports, and to provide ad-hoc reporting and analysis capabilities for a range of business applications.
A management reporting tool was needed that would be fed from their Intentia® Movex® ERP system running on the IBM® eServer iSeries™(AS/400®), and would address a number of areas:
The solution was a SPSS data warehouse, which Canon used to improve several key elements of its business operations.
Being more than satisfied with the reliability and performance of the iSeries platform, it was important to Canon that the solution should run on the same platform, to minimize any problems feeding data from Movex. In addition, Canon wanted to take advantage of their in-house iSeries skills.
SPSS Inc. seemed the natural choice because of its specialization in the iSeries platform, and its ability to easily extract data from Movex. Canon was also impressed that the entire toolset could be provided by SPSS — the relational data warehouse, the world-class Essbase OLAP database, the ETL tools, the Query and Report Writer facility, as well as the ability to deploy over the Web. Another huge appeal was that once the initial investment was made with SPSS, there was no restriction on the number or nature of applications that could be created using the technology.
Provides faster reporting and enables greater depth of analysis
The financial analysis application provides information about the daily and monthly sales of all Canon's products sold by the various channels in different geographic regions. Each month, a financial reporting pack is prepared and delivered to approximately 40 of Canon's managers. Preparing this report used to take three weeks but now only takes two days.
Canon's business and financial analysts use the ShowCase® Suite from SPSS financial solution on a daily basis, creating ad-hoc reports which provide details of products sold across the various regions. For instance, the Average Selling Price report shows which products have been the most heavily discounted and in which geographic regions. Prior to the ShowCase Suite application, this report simply could not be produced. Now, the very latest product discount information can be produced by clicking on one button, at any point in the month.
Terence Allmark, consulting planning and analysis manager, says of the financial analysis capabilities, "Not only has this drastically improved the efficiency with which we can view and analyze the data but, by adopting SPSS's single version of the truth approach, we also have the confidence that the entire organization is viewing and acting on the same set of data."
Allows a greater degree of analytical involvement by all budget holders
About 150 users at Canon UK are involved in the budgeting process, which formerly required the time-consuming and error-prone task of re-keying data. Because of the huge volumes of data involved — the marketing department, for example, had more than 20 spreadsheets to be linked — it was only at the end of the process that the whole picture was presented, leaving very little time to carry out any budgetary analysis. Searching through these spreadsheets for the source of any problems was incredibly laborious and there was no scope to incorporate any historic element into the budgeting process.
It took three internal staff only three weeks to customize the ShowCase Suite solution to meet Canon's budgeting needs. The company was able to use this solution for the budgeting cycle that began in November 2000. By incorporating historic trends from previous years, the budgeting software allows budget holders to analyze their own cost center data before submitting it, which in turn involves an automatic checking and validation process. Because this process is so streamlined, it's far easier now for Canon to perform a budget review six months into the year.
By having more time to work with the budget, staff are able to provide greater input into the budgeting process, which not only ensures that the final budget is realistic, but also brings staff closer to the running of the business.
Helps managers monitor customer service information and the performance of Canon technicians
Canon has a large number of active customer service contracts at any one time, with technicians making 50,000 visits per month. Information about each service visit is entered into the ERP system and then the information is analyzed to ensure that the required levels of service are maintained.
Previously, this information was held in a Microsoft Access® database, which took five days to update each month. The underlying code was so complex that maintenance and ad-hoc amendments to the system were extremely difficult. The resulting report lacked detail, and service level information could not easily be provided for an individual customer or technician.
To replace the Access system, an SPSS application was built which holds information about each service visit. The application allows Canon's service managers to manage the logistics of their teams of engineers more effectively, in order to cater to areas where demand is greater, and to establish training requirements. Any aspect of a customer visit can be analyzed with respect to the technician, the customer, the location or purpose of the call, right down to a detailed level, e.g., the number of copies made since the last visit.
The service application also makes certain trends visible. For example, it came to light that a significant amount of time was wasted due to technicians arriving for scheduled maintenance visits when no one was there to meet them. A solution was soon implemented: Mobile phones were given to each technician in order to call ahead prior to each visit. As a result, there has been significant time savings due to far fewer wasted visits.
The service application is also used to help calculate the bonus paid to the service engineers. This is dependent on various factors, including the number of jobs per day, the cost per million copies, the number of copies between visits and whether one visit resulted in another visit. The SPSS Inc. software solution has resulted in a more objective approach to awarding bonuses.
Utilizes ShowCase Enterprise Reporting
Since August 2001, 80 users have been taking advantage of Enterprise Reporting, which is used to view a series of 70 pre-formatted daily, weekly and monthly reports, delivered over the Web and presented in Excel or PDF format. Some reports have selection criteria to allow the users to choose on which product, region, date, etc. the report will be based and where appropriate, to specify limits and ranges.
Some examples of where Enterprise Reporting has proven to be extremely beneficial:
We can easily focus on specifics, allowing identification of risk areas at early stages in the planning process, which is invaluable to any business. Being an Excel-based system, the time taken to train new users is minimal - it is definitely one of the easiest systems I have used in my career to date.
Bobi Howard
Finance Planning & Analysis Manager
Canon UK
As a result of the success of the initial ShowCase Suite applications, there are a number of additional applications in the pipeline, including:
The complete list of global SPSS success stories can be found here
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