Simplifying the Complex

As one of Canada's leading brewers, Labatt Breweries of Canada sells its products in all provinces within the country, where legislation and taxation of beer sales vary by each region. Historically, Labatt developed operating structures, systems processes and data development adhering to each regional and provincial structure.

However, this approach resulted in a patchwork of systems, processes and data that was anything but integrated. Not only did Labatt lack consolidation across its geographic dimensions, but it did not have an integrated view across functional dimensions. Executives, managers and operators in different departments across the company lacked full visibility into the key performance indicators (KPIs) for which they were responsible.

"We wanted to make sure that each manager had a viewpoint with respect to their line-of-sight responsibility," says Michael Ali, Enterprise Business Intelligence Change Management, Labatt Breweries of Canada. "A self-serve model would allow us to get the right knowledge into the hands of the operators so that they can make more informed and timely decisions rather than channeling everything through analyst groups."

The spawn of this vision was an Enterprise Business Intelligence (EBI) program, which unlike pure technology projects, is a business-driven project designed to improve efficiency and provide people with visibility into KPIs. The program, once in place, would help Labatt provide executives, managers and analysts with the critical information needed to better manage corporate, regional, functional and individual performance.

A Tall Order

To tackle this performance management challenge, Labatt decided to build a three-tier business intelligence architecture that would aid the analysis of its business, as well as create and monitor plans in a consistent way through and across the organization.

At the same time, Labatt was undergoing a massive restructuring effort due to both the recent Ambev and Interbrew merger and the redesign of its own business environment. This lent an added layer of complexity as Labatt's business model was fundamental to the foundation of the project.

"During our EBI implementation everything that could change did change -- the organizational structure, the ownership, processes, key performance indicators, business sponsors," says Jonathan Starkey, Enterprise Business Intelligence Technology and Data Manager, Labatt Breweries of Canada. After a comprehensive RFP process, Labatt selected technology providers for its three-tiered architecture: Informatica Corporation provided tools for the extraction of data from 11 enterprise applications; KALIDO offered software for adaptive data warehousing; and Cognos supplied its Corporate Performance Management solutions for planning, dashboarding, reporting and analytics.

The decision to use KALIDO as its data warehouse was particularly critical to the project's success as Ali and Starkey determined beforehand that the project would have been impossible to manage using traditional data warehousing techniques.

"We knew that if we selected a bolt-on data warehousing application for our ERP software, we wouldn't be able to adapt rapidly or cost-effectively enough to change," says Starkey. "In data terms we need to go into deeper granularity all the time. Previously, classic data warehouse or data mart techniques would have sufficed, but they were no longer good enough: everything had become more complex, and faster moving."

KALIDO fit the bill as an enterprise data warehouse that offered sufficient flexibility at its core. Acting as an information hub, the Kalido model at Labatt includes 16 years of sales history, 48 dimensions, 93 transaction data sets and draws data from 11 source systems. "KALIDO is like our corporate vault -- it doesn't matter what ERP we have today or tomorrow, what the fingerprint of the business looks like today or tomorrow: KALIDO never forgets," says Starkey.

From Start to Finish

Labatt began laying the foundation for EBI in December 2003. The first phase of the rollout covered the commercial and finance functions, which established the foundation for cascading line-of-sight metrics and managing Labatt's data complexity. From there, planning and target-setting capabilities were added and its output incorporated into performance monitoring, reporting and analytics capabilities. BearingPoint consultants assisted with the KALIDO implementation and with defining KPIs for reporting.

"BearingPoint played a crucial role in getting us quickly to the right solution for our needs, by running workshops for key stakeholders from the executive level right through to the data-entry people," says Starkey.

New metrics were added to these original areas by combining data such as volumes, revenue, cost and spend from different sources and piecing these together across multiple dimensions to create contribution. By July 2005, Labatt was putting the finishing touch on its comprehensive EBI program: a fully integrated supply chain.

"Given all the noise that was going on in the business, what we actually delivered is a huge success because it provided a lot of information very simply to a lot of people in a consistent way, not only within a function but across the organization," says Ali.

Bringing Clarity to Chaos

The adaptive, business-focused nature of KALIDO -- and the three-tiered architecture as a whole -- provides Labatt with a new level of detail. In the past, planning was prepared using different tools and spreadsheets and could only be aligned to changes in business through manual effort and only at a very high level.

"It was previously common to have meetings where people had different sets of numbers for the same performance metrics," says Starkey. "We would then spend more time determining whose numbers were right than on determining the right business decisions to make."

Now, the EBI program enables users to track actual performance against their plan without needing to hunt through reports, or go into different systems and integrate data for themselves. They can also drill down using Cognos reporting tools to see the low-level data held in KALIDO.

"Implementing the Cognos CPM solution has provided us with an opportunity to move to a model that is focused on driving performance, profitability and proactively managing our business in a timely manner as opposed to continually gathering and seeking less up-to-date information from disparate systems and spreadsheets," says Ali. "Historically, our business analysts would spend perhaps 70 percent of their time hunting and gathering, and 30 percent of their time on analysis. With our solution...the split is probably 20 percent to 80 percent in favor of analysis."

Labatt management is now able to view consistent information generated from disparate systems and sources. Teams can also model and refine particular areas of their business plans in an integrated environment, helping to keep the monitoring of their performance relevant and efficient.

"Inherent in that single version of truth is the removal of everyone's interpretation or customization of a particular view of data," says Ali. "The other key advantage of our new business intelligence architecture is that with multi-dimensional views of a particular metric, it gives employees improved context to draw balanced conclusions from any given set of performance data."

Sales & Marketing Gains Expanded Line of Site

As mentioned earlier, Labatt's parent company Interbrew merged with AmBev to create InBev in 2004. This merger introduced another layer into what was already a complex organizational picture. Labatt now markets, distributes and sells more than 60 global brands, which requires Labatt to manage the performance of both global and local brands and report the results to various stakeholders.

This challenge is compounded by the need to cater to two distinct channels -- on-premise (restaurants, bars) and retail (liquor stores and other locations where consumers purchase beer to drink at home). For sales and marketing executives, this two-pronged approach requires detailed analysis of how both channels are performing. For example, while sales in a particular city may be strong, they may be heavily skewed toward one channel, but partially off-set by the other. Without insight to understand that distinction, Labatt may miss a crucial opportunity.

With its EBI program in place, Labatt now has the detail it needs to drill closely into individual performance -- from national and corporate to regional and brand to local and on-premise or retail.

"Our solution will give our marketing and sales group self serve access to the data they need to manage their business," says Ali. "KALIDO will help us to improve visibility into how our brands are performing and their contributions to the business in a standard and uniform way from a national perspective all the way down to the territory level."

These benefits plug directly into Labatt's overall company performance as KPIs are cascaded through the organization, with consistent views, but specific to a manager's line of site, showing how their performance fits into the overall company goals.

The Glass is Half Full

From an operations standpoint, the consolidation and integration of not only the sales, marketing and supply chain functions but also all functions across the organization is helping Labatt to cut costs. The company now has the ability to optimize supply chain expenditure through increased visibility, and can boast both consistent metrics across all breweries and timely visibility of management information to improve operational cost structures.

"We expect to identify new opportunities, from an organic volume perspective,, and we think we can grow our top line, based on better visibility into the business," says Ali. "Furthermore, our EBI solution with KALIDO will help us identify opportunities to improve our bottom line. With self serve access to data, we can be much more proactive in understanding our business performance and stay one step ahead of the competition."