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Customers In The Spotlight

Post Danmark

"BusinessObjects provides us with a clear view of the Postal Services network."

Martin Ytting
Director of Business Intelligence Manager
Post Danmark

Challenge

The origins of Post Danmark can be traced back to 1624 when King Christian IV issued a "Royal Ordnance on Postmen." Post Danmark has an annual turnover of approximately DKK11 billion and employs 22,000 people.

Post Danmark's main activity is the provision of postal services, which include distribution, communication, transportation, and logistics activities. Since 1995, the company has been operating on a commercial basis against competitors in most of these business areas. The postal services sector in Denmark is in a period of rapid change, with ever-increasing competition from private companies; in contrast, letter volumes are declining by 3% to 4% annually. Post Danmark has had to become more efficient, and a key element in its effort to streamline the business is the implementation of SAP® and BusinessObjects™ business intelligence (BI) technology from Business Objects, an SAP company.

In the past, Post Danmark used ad hoc tools, including spreadsheets, to consolidate business information. The structure was decentralized and important information was scattered throughout the organization. As a consequence, different data sources contained conflicting information, and lines of responsibility for data accuracy and information tracking processes were unclear.

Approach

With BusinessObjects as a top layer over Post Danmark's strategic data warehouse, the 362 million rows of transaction data have become easily accessible to the business. Since adopting BusinessObjects five years ago, BI has become an integral part of Post Danmark's IT strategy. Today, BusinessObjects is a cornerstone for both strategic activities and day-to-day operations throughout the company.

In addition to BusinessObjects Enterprise XI, Post Danmark uses BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence™, BusinessObjects Web Intelligence®, and BusinessObjects Integration for SAP®.

Post Danmark transport and letter distribution centers handle 4 million letters daily. To ensure efficient operation, the centers are required to provide near real-time reports on letter volumes. The window from generation of data on incoming mail to production of BusinessObjects reports is just 15 minutes. With BusinessObjects, Post Danmark achieves the strict 15-minute service level agreement (SLA) and generates the required report from 13 million data rows—every day.

The company's courier-express and packages division handles 150,000 parcels daily. With the rise in Internet shopping and the gradual decline in the amount of letters, the parcel post business is becoming more important. Like the letter centers, this division is also required to meet the 15-minute SLA target. This too is being met with BusinessObjects reports, which are available wihtin15 minutes after the data is generated in the data warehouse.

Post Danmark distribution centers need accurate and up-to-the-minute information about the amount of mail produced every day so that they can plan resources for the daily deliveries to their customers. BusinessObjects offers an intuitive interface, and an access route to vast amounts of information.

In addition to its support for day-to-day operations, BusinessObjects plays a crucial role in the long-term planning functions carried out by Post Danmark's finance and planning department. All information about incoming and outgoing mail and post office transactions is stored in an Oracle data warehouse. BusinessObjects enables Post Danmark's finance and planning team members to extract the information they need to perform statistical analysis for optimum resource allocation and identification of the strongest performing centers.

One of the major challenges in Post Danmark's business and IT environment is to accommodate both the short-term and operational needs of mail centers alongside the strategic and less time-critical needs of the finance and planning department. If a production manager does not receive information within 15 minutes, it is useless. In contrast, finance and planning needs are easily met with just monthly reporting. BusinessObjects offers the flexible facilities to turn data into useful information for all departments.

Results

In its journey to transforming postal services with BusinessObjects XI, Post Danmark's BI project started out from a distributed and fragmented approach to data handling. Using BusinessObjects tools, the data has become increasingly consolidated and much more organized. Martin Ytting, business intelligence manager at Post Danmark, says, "BusinessObjects provides us with a clear view of the Postal Services network."

With the SAP Competence Center spearheading development, Post Danmark is gearing up to implement more advanced BusinessObjects XI facilities. Performance management and data mining with BusinessObjects XI represent just two of the areas with the potential to move Post Danmark up to the next level of business intelligence.

• Learn more about BusinessObjects Enterprise
• Learn more about BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence
• Learn more about BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
• Learn more about BusinessObjects Integration for SAP
• Read more Business Objects customer success stories

Quick Facts

• Industry:
  Postal Services
• Business Process:
  Finance, planning, operations
• Business Pain:
  Post Danmark requires accurate, daily reporting to meet service level agreements.
• Why Business Objects?:
  Consolidation of business information and support for day-to-day for operations and long-term planning makes Business Objects the right choice.
• Business Objects Products and Services:
  BusinessObjects Enterprise XI, BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence, BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, BusinessObjects Integration for SAP