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554 Part Four Building and Managing Systems

Honam Petrochemical’s Quest for Better Management Reports

CASE STUDY

Y ou may soon hear more about Honam be overloaded with unnecessary data so they could

Petrochemical Corporation (HPC).
focus on the “watch-up indicators” considered cru-
cial to the business. They wanted up-to-the-minute
Headquartered in Seoul, South Korea,
this company manufactures and sells reports that they could see quickly on their desk-
petrochemical products, including synthetic resins; tops. They also wanted access via the Web or their
synthetic industrial materials, including ethylene mobile devices. Finally, HPC executives wanted
glycol and ethylene oxide for making polyester; enterprise-wide data that could be accessed and
automobile antifreeze solutions; benzene; propylene; shared easily across various business units and
and ethylene. HPC has about 1,700 employees, and functions to support the company’s expansion geo-
its 2011 revenues were close to US$7.3 billion. It’s a graphically and by product line.
leader in Korea’s heavy chemical industry. These requirements drove the technology selec-
HPC’s primary market is South Korea, but the tion process. HPC’s information systems team
company has set its sights on becoming a top-tier reviewed a number of different software products
chemical company throughout Asia and achieving and vendors and selected SAP BusinessObjects
sales of US$10 billion. Honam plans to do this by Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects Web
strengthening its existing businesses, extending its Intelligence. The company already had seven years’
overseas business, and developing new businesses. experience running SAP’s ERP system, so this ven-
Honam has nine affiliate companies in China, dor seemed like an appropriate choice.
Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the United SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards is a drag-and-
Kingdom, and overseas branches in Shanghai, drop visualization tool designed to create interac-
Qingdao, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Moscow, and tive analytics for powerful, personalized dashboards
New York City. based on SAP’s BusinessObjects business intel-
To manage its far-flung operations, HPC needs ligence platform. BusinessObjects software tools
reliable reports that are able to accurately measure can be used for performance management, plan-
management performance and provide useful, accu- ning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise
rate information for increasing sales and reducing information management, and provide self-service
costs. HPC’s existing systems provided managers access to data from databases and Excel spread-
with reports to guide their business decisions, but in sheets. SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence is an
many cases the data in the reports were out-of-date ad hoc query, reporting, and analysis tool that is
and “sanitized.” Individual managers were process- used to create queries or use existing reports, for-
ing and manipulating the data to make their depart- mat retrieved information, and perform analysis to
ments “look better” to senior management. The understand trends and root causes.
report data were also somewhat stale and presented Once HPC’s project team determined the busi-
only on a periodic basis. ness intelligence tools for the solution, its focus
Executives at the chemical firm wanted access turned to determining which data and reports were
to the data before they went through manipulation required by the company’s 200 high-level users of
or processing. They didn’t want each department’s the new system. The information systems team
own interpretation of reports. Instead, executives started by asking executives to list existing reports
wanted to see current data to get a real view of what they were already receiving and to assess the use-
was actually happening on the plant floor or in the fulness of each. The list was cut to a more manage-
sales office. able size and the executives were asked if there
Developing a business intelligence solution were any additional reports or data from which
specifically for executives requires a good deal of their organizational groups could benefit. These
up-front requirements gathering. HPC’s executive findings were very useful in determining the right
decision makers did not want to work with last set of reports and dashboards for HPC executives.
quarter’s numbers. They wanted anytime access Once these user requirements were clarified, the
to the most timely data, but they did not want to information systems team designed a system that

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