Executive Committee Dashboards on iPad using ... - Minoc

<strong>Executive</strong> <strong>Committee</strong> <strong>Dashboards</strong> on iPad 

@ Solvay … using MicroStrategy 

Business meets IT 21/06/2012 

François Garang 

Solvay Information Services

AGENDA 

"Cheops" Application context 

Project Birth 

Overview – the Proof Of Concept 

Project Youth 

Architecture / Organizations Choices : "Yes we can !" 

Development Phase 

Overview - what result 

On going further steps 

Lessons Learned 

Q & A 

"<strong>Executive</strong> <strong>Dashboards</strong> on iPad using MicroStrategy" - 2 - 

SIS / FGG / Mars 2012 

© 2010, SOLVAY S.A.

Solvay and the new “Rhodia Integration” context 

Two sectors … becoming Three : SOLVAY Chemicals, SOLVAY Plastics 

and Rhodia’s activities 

Global leader in : 

• specialty polymers, vinyls, essential chemicals like soda ash, caustic soda, hydrogen peroxide, 

special chemicals like fluorinated products and high-purity grades … 

• … and now in polyamids, sustainable development products 

15,000 people in 40 countries … becoming 29,000 in 55 countries 

Confirmed growing presence in Asia, Americas and Eastern Europe 

Solvay in figures : 

Consolidated sales in 2011 of EUR 12.7 billion 

Operating profits of EUR 2.1 billion 

90 % turnover on product for which Solvay is in Top Three 

25/06/2012 "<strong>Executive</strong> <strong>Dashboards</strong> on iPad using MicroStrategy" - 3 - 

3 



Cheops

Application Context 

"Cheops" is Solvay's financial reporting application 

Client-Server application - MS SQL Server database 

(# 1 TB, 700 M records) 

> 350 users, 

> 200 consolidated companies, 

> 100 M updates / months, 

# 10.000 calculations / month 

Home-made application ! 

25 years financial reporting experience 

Cheops is 12 years old : 6 main versions released so far 

A CPM (Corporate Performance Management) and a BI 

application together 




Cheops, a CPM Application … 

Budgeting, Planning and 

Forecasting 

Strategy 

Management 

Profitability Modeling 

and Optimization 

Financial 

Consolidation 

Financial Statutory & 

Management reporting 

Extended "<strong>Executive</strong> Management <strong>Dashboards</strong> Board on - iPad 1 - using MicroStrategy" - 6 - 



Cheops, a CPM Application … 


Forecasting 

Strategy 

Management 



Financial 




Totally Covered 

Partially Covered 


Extended Management Board - 1 - 



… and a BI Tool together 


Forecasting 

Strategy 

Management 



Financial 




+ 

BI Tool 

Iris 




Project Birth 

A Clear and Strong request from Solvay 

"Group Accounting" to the IT Cheops Team : 

« Add a user-friendly presentation layer 

to Cheops / Iris environment ! » 

Meaning : 

• simplified User Interface = hide Cheops database complexity 

• aimed at managers / non-financial users 

• available on mobile devices (tablets, smart phones) 




Quick focus on BI @ Solvay 

Solvay is a big SAP customer naturally developped 

usage of BW in both ERP and HR domains 

• Bex usage mainly for ERP users (Sales, Logistics …) 

• BI on demand for HR from SAP Portal : all managers 

For the financial scope : home made Iris within Cheops 

environment : standard requests execution + on demand 

New organization context at Solvay 

• Management initiative on Global Reporting Optimization 

• One output will be the agreed creation of a BI CC 




Quick focus on Mobility @ Solvay 

Long history of Windows Mobile support 

First developped IT Service for mobile devices : 

Blackberry in 2007 (630) 

"Light" It Service for iPhone in 2010 (200) 

New service for Android to come 

IT Innovation Challenge on iPads … 

… and finally this <strong>Executive</strong> <strong>Committee</strong> initiative on iPad ! 

"… it is not a gadget, it is the future ! …" 




Project Youth 

Project merged within a more comprehensive 

study lead by Solvay IT BI Team, aiming at : 

• answering similar requests (for example as 

a complementary tool on top of SAP BW systems …) 

• more generally : establish a selection of tools to address 

a typology of different needs arising within Solvay 




Project Youth 

Large range of BI Tools evaluated 

Proofs Of Concept run on a short list of pre-selected Tools : 

• SAP Business Objects' "Web Intelligence" = "BI Stack Player" 

• MicroStrategy's "MicroStrategy" 

= "BI Pure Player" 

• QlikTech's "QlikView" 

= "BI Niche Player" 

Overall Study Report submitted to IT Entreprise Architects for 

decisions … 

And for the Financial scope, the winner was … 




Project Youth 

Why MicroStrategy 

• Best Tool tested for financial field to be integrated on top of 

Cheops / Iris ! 

• Meta-data configuration : to hide the Cheops database 

structure complexity 

• The "Mobile« offer : still not perfect however improving 

quite fast and more advanced than its competitors 

• Market Leader / Features richness / visualization quality 

/ Competitive commercial offer 




Proof Of Concept Overview 

DEMO 







Architecture Choices : "Yes we can !" 

Context @ Solvay : weather trend is … Cloudy ! 

• Decision to move to Gmail 

• Significant Salesforce customer 

• Increased hosting on the Cloud 

As a consequence : 

• Cheops environment moves to the Cloud 

• MicroStrategy Plateform moves to the Cloud as well 




"Yes we can !" 

Ambitious choices ! 

Fortunately, Cheops 

has supporters … 

… all around the 

world ! 







First Project identification 

Context @ Solvay 

• New Solvay Organization New Reporting Structure definition 

• "Reporting Factory" creation for the Finance scope within 

Shared Services entity 

• First Reporing achievement identified : 

<strong>Executive</strong> <strong>Committee</strong> dashboards on iPad using MicroStrategy ! 

and planned : June 2011 closing ! 




Who are our mobile users here 

Senior 

Management 

Management 

<strong>Dashboards</strong> & 

Reports 

Customers 

of our 

Customers 

Customer 

Services 

Apps 

Mobile 

Employees 

Sales, 

Services, … 




Project development 

Source data preparation according to new financial reporting 

specifications 

MicroStrategy platform installation on the Cloud 

Help requested from MicroStrategy consulting services : 

on-going for : 

• system implementation 

• data modelization 

• reports / documents / application creation 




The <strong>Executive</strong> <strong>Dashboards</strong> Dream Team 

Eddy (MSTR) 

Bertrand (MSTR) 

Jakub (MSTR) 

Katarzina (MSTR) 

Olivier (Solvay) 

Marcin (MSTR) 

Mateusz (MSTR) 

Kamil (MSTR) 

Not to forget Yves, Patrick, Sandro and Mario (all MSTR)! 




What was the result - Overview 

DEMO 




Before … 










… After ! 







Before … 







… After ! 

























What’s going on, what’s coming next 

Management Report current application 

to be converted to its web version 

to be adapted for Business Units 

merge Solvay and Rhodia <strong>Dashboards</strong> applications 

Management Reports to Management <strong>Dashboards</strong> 

no more reports : real dashboards ! 

wider usage of MicroStrategy’s visualization capabilities 










iPad expected advantages … 

Foreseen advantages were mainly related to the delivered 

application : “MicroStrategy dashboards on the iPad” 

◦ a huge PDF report of more than 100 pages (not always printed in both sides !) 

replaced by a single iPad application … 

… with an overall 30 screens … 

… in 16 MIcroStrategy documents 

◦ information availability on the device : 

as soon as published following the monthly closing, thanks to “subscription” 

configuration in MicroStrategy, which automates the refresh 

from inside and outside Solvay (hosted on the cloud !) 

reachable even when no connection available, thanks to the local cache 

◦ user-friendliness and new visualizations opportunities 

easy navigation within the application (in comparaison with printed pdf) 

application esthetic 

wide range of efficient visualizations … even if not much used yet 




… and iPad less expected advantages ! 

Un-foreseen advantages were mainly related to an immediate 

demand for a much wider usage of the iPad from the top 

management ! 

◦ Management Report additional requests : 

have the pdf version ”on board” the iPads 

have “refreshed” for information not related to closing 

be able to put comments on <strong>Dashboards</strong> 

◦ Other Documents management requests : 

be able to access all <strong>Executive</strong> <strong>Committee</strong> notes from the iPad 

be able to annotate PDF documents on the iPad : using the keyboard or the 

touch screen (finger …) 

◦ Extended usage of the iPad requests, making it a “all day companion” ! 

banking applications 

stock exchange applications 

news applications 




Lessons learned 

Positive attitude is to start something ! In our case : 

basic BI, more reporting than dashboarding 

light mobile deployment 

Tool selection is still quite important 

Mobile devices management not to be forgotten ! 

If you can have more time than what we have for this project, 

do not hesitate : Take it ! 




Q & A

Executive Committee Dashboards on iPad using ... - Minoc

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