Customers

Deutsche Bahn

Deutsche Bahn Logo"Business Objects meets all the requirements of a suitable application for analyzing personnel data. We have already dramatically increased the efficiency of our staff assignments—and we expect major savings."

Ulrich Prätorius
Project Manager
Deutsche Bahn AG

Challenge

The Qualify Plus project

The Deutsche Bahn Group, one of the leading international transportation and logistics companies, is also one of Germany's largest employers, with over 220,000 people on staff. More than 64,000 employees alone work for its Transportation and Logistics division from over 1,110 locations worldwide.

Thousands of people work each day for the company's freight (Railion), commuter (Regio), and long-distance passenger transport—and Deutsche Bahn collects and processes the exact work time for each of these employees, from reporting to work to leaving the premises. Almost each individual activity can be recorded by the minute. The company analyzes the information from each location to create productivity benchmarks so it can determine, for example, at which location a train driver is less productive than at others due to a more ineffective transportation service. Analyzing this variance and the underlying reasons was previously a major challenge. If a train driver spends 90% of his shift on transportation services, what does he do during the remainder of that time—and how can the 10% be reduced?

Previously, Deutsche Bahn used five separate systems to collect and analyze this data from the company's individual divisions. To better assess and, ultimately, improve the productivity of its employees' daily work, the company launched the "Qualify Plus" project under the code name "Orpheus." DB Systems, the group's IT service provider, was tasked with selecting a suitable software solution. The new solution should create a single system for collecting, processing, and analyzing data for the company's freight, commuter, and long-distance passenger divisions.

Approach

Effective, Around-the-Clock Staff Assignments

Under the direction of Ulrich Prätorius, project manager at Deutsche Bahn AG, in March 2006, Deutsche Bahn decided to implement a key performance indicator (KPI)-based personnel management system, using BusinessObjects™ XI Release 2 from Business Objects, an SAP company. BusinessObjects Data Integrator extracts the data from multiple sources and integrates it in a data warehouse for later analysis. By analyzing the different divisions, the company can see how many employees have been assigned to a specific shift. A 24-hour chart shows the exact personnel distribution. By benchmarking the individual activities against each other, it can also improve the efficiency of staff assignments.

Deutsche Bahn implemented the BI products from Business Objects within just four months. The business intelligence (BI) vendor also offers a comprehensive service portfolio that includes software installation, configuration, and training. Employees became acquainted with the new solution through BusinessObjects Knowledge Accelerator. The training sessions were customized and used the real-live BI solutions of Deutsche Bahn. Since Knowledge Accelerator is Web-based, training and travel costs were reduced to a minimum.

Results

Optimizing Business Processes

BusinessObjects XI Release 2 provides Deutsche Bahn executives with comprehensive insight into productivity and performance. Users can also quickly calculate the total mileage travelled by each employee per shift. This information, in turn, can be used to determine how long the employee spent on activities other than work, like walking from the registration office to the train. By analyzing this data with BusinessObjects, Deutsche Bahn can calculate the time needed and then take action, such as cutting the number of walks, so that work time becomes more productive. In addition, the company can now define clear targets for its staff and monitor the level of achievement.

The Business Objects solution has been deployed across locations and is currently used by 950 Deutsche Bahn employees from the corporate level to individual planners at the regional hubs. "Business Objects allows us to report the detailed activities of various types of employees so we can optimize our own business processes," explains Prätorius. "BusinessObjects XI Release 2 has been implemented as a Web-based application and is used through our intranet, which is much more flexible than using a full client. We have already dramatically increased the efficiency of our staff assignments—and we expect major savings." In addition to this system, Deutsche Bahn AG is using BusinessObjects for approximately 40 other projects (processes).

Outlook

Due to the broad acceptance for the solution, Deutsche Bahn plans to extend the cooperation with Business Objects. The next step is to incorporate the network division (DB Netz) into the solution and later deploy additional Business Objects applications for data collection and analysis. PRIMA, the upcoming project for supporting bid management, will also use Business Objects software to calculate the necessary passenger occupancy to make new routes more cost-effective.

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