BMT enriches strategic decisions with SAP management reporting

New technologies to drive new ways of working

The BMT Group, which is made up of four different divisions active in different markets and locations, has been growing steadily for the last 10 years. To support this growth and to maintain its agility in dynamic industrial segments, the company reshaped its corporate structure to oversee the Group’s decision-making.

“We had become too complex for the old way of working,” explains BMT Group COO Benoit Reynders. “It was no longer adequate to request information from each division separately. We decided to implement an overarching system to extract, analyze and visualize the data contained in the divisions’ ERP, HR and financial systems and present it in one complete dashboard.”

Harnessing the power of SAP HANA

To make this vision a reality, BMT needed the latest technology to drive deep integration, along with an experienced collaborative partner.

“We conducted an in-depth selection process, and delaware emerged as our most suitable partner,” Benoit continues. “delaware was present from the very beginning. We brought our needs to the table, and delaware thought alongside us to determine how the end result would look, including industry benchmarks and KPI recommendations,” says Benoit.

Although BMT divisions rely on systems developed by different vendors, SAP HANA was chosen as the driving force behind the solution. SAP Business Objects was selected as the frontend, with SAP Business Intelligence receiving data from all systems, consolidating it and presenting it in a unified, intuitive way.

An incremental approach to transformation

The project was kicked off at the end of the 1st quarter of 2016, with BMT and delaware taking an incremental approach to implementation The KPI dash board for sales went live at the beginning of 2018 and is already being used in several top-level meetings. The operations dashboard is planned to go live later in spring of 2018.

BMT Group believes that providing the right data to right people at the right time will enable operational excellence – one of the most important differentiators in its industries. SAP Business Intelligence features an intuitive, self-service environment that makes it easy for decision-makers to design their own analyses and generate custom reports using data from all divisions.

“On a corporate level, the solution gives me a tremendous amount of useful information that I never had before,” Benoit explains. “In the past, it was extremely difficult to take business data and use it to craft an accurate, comprehensive analysis. SAP BI drives this transparency.”

Keeping everybody on the same page

“SAP BI gives BMT an enormous advantage. We no longer have to make complex sales-related requests to our divisions. For the first time, we have consolidated sales information at Group level, i.e. every division has access to the same type of information, in the same format and based on the same definitions. This enables us to understand our own business in real time. In clarifying the real value drivers behind the different business functions, it becomes much easier to find and understand the reasoning behind our strategic decisions.”

“Corporate leaders look at business data in a very different way than operational leaders,” Benoit states. “However, along the way, we noticed that it was very useful for our divisional management teams to see the same data we’re relying on. It unifies our discussions and give us familiar reference points, both strategic and operational.”

Looking ahead to an agile, digital future

“At BMT, we’re strong believers in the power of digitization. Based on our experience with this project, we are convinced that SAP HANA is the idea enabler for the deeply interconnected systems and applications of tomorrow. delaware will continue to be our partner as we move forward on our transformation path,” Benoit concludes.