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Information Builders > Case Studies > Bunzl Australasia Ramps up Efficiency and Productivity With WebFOCUS
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Bunzl Australasia Ramps up Efficiency and Productivity With WebFOCUS

Technology Category
  • Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
  • Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
  • Food & Beverage
  • Healthcare & Hospitals
  • Retail
Applicable Functions
  • Logistics & Transportation
  • Procurement
Use Cases
  • Inventory Management
  • Supply Chain Visibility
Services
  • Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
  • Data Science Services
  • System Integration
The Challenge
Bunzl Australasia, a leading specialist distribution group, was facing challenges due to its heavy transaction volume and low margins which demanded high efficiency. The company's three primary business units each used different enterprise resource and planning (ERP) systems, making it difficult to obtain visibility into daily sales activity and other operational functions throughout the enterprise. This disparity in systems was hindering timely access to critical data, thus affecting the company's decision-making process.
About The Customer
Bunzl Australasia is a leading specialist distribution group that provides outsourcing solutions and a broad range of non-food consumable products and services. The company manages goods and services for nearly 7,500 customers and close to 18,000 locations in Australia and New Zealand. With 1,100 employees and more than 60 locations across these two countries, Bunzl’s three primary business units provide integrated supply services, including procurement and inventory management, to customers in the contract cleaning, food processing, healthcare, hotel and catering, industrial, redistribution, retail, and safety industries.
The Solution
To overcome the challenges, Bunzl mounted a multi-phase business intelligence (BI) project that chose Information Builders’ WebFOCUS BI and analytics platform. The company created an IBM DB/400 data warehouse as a combined source of information for operational intelligence. Some ERP systems automatically load data into the warehouse each night; other data is loaded manually. Bunzl plans to streamline these data integration tasks with iWay DataMigrator so everything will be automated in the future. The company used WebFOCUS to create a BI portal that offers the business community a consumer-friendly environment that makes it easy to view reports and analytics online. The WebFOCUS security architecture restricts access by role, so users see only the levels of detail for which they are authorized.
Operational Impact
  • Top management and other staff have one cohesive set of tools that interact seamlessly with all underlying databases.
  • Data is current, and users can easily view, analyze, and manipulate information on the fly for incisive decision-making.
  • Accounting clerks can quickly identify aging transactions on individual businesses, as well as money owed to suppliers.
Quantitative Benefit
  • Reports that used to take an hour to generate are now produced in minutes.
  • Daily sales reports were unavailable until lunchtime the following day. The managing director now receives them by 9:30 A.M. every morning – and that time will soon be shortened to 7:00 A.M.

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