Pidilite Deploys BI Solution from MAIA
By Priyanka Akhouri
Mumbai, Feb 27, 2008 1435 hrs IST

Pidilite Industries is the market leader in adhesives and sealants, construction chemicals, hobby colors, and polymer emulsions in India. Its brand name, 'Fevicol', has become synonymous with adhesives to millions in India and is ranked amongst the most trusted brands in India. Since its inception in 1959, Pidilite Industries has been a pioneer in consumer and speciality chemicals in India. Over two-third of the company's sales come from products and segments it has pioneered in India. The company's product range includes adhesives and sealants, construction and paint chemicals, automotive chemicals, art materials, industrial adhesives, industrial and textile resins, and organic pigments and preparations. Most of the products have been developed through strong in-house R&D. Need for a Solution: Pidilite had invested in Orion ERP (Oracle database) for its India operations & SAP Business One (SQL database) for its overseas operations. Both had MIS reports but had limited capability. The company was using Excel for reporting and queries were written on Oracle D2K. The business users faced various challenges like inventory maintenance, data mining, in depth and ample analysis of the data available. Rajesh Panchal, head IT of Pidilite Industry said, "We didn't have multiple informative reporting options for strategy framing. This created challenge specifically for the senior management as there was a strong urge of getting the filtered data and in the desired form." The company had lots of information stored in the data, but business users faced challenges in exploiting it on time. Panchal said, "We had lots of information coming from different data sources. We faced challenges in terms of having single unified view of two different data sources; ensuring data that is consistent, accurate, and reliable." Solution: Pidilite was using Business Objects but its solution was only restricted to the top management and analysts. "We were looking for operational Business Intelligence (BI) solution, which could accommodate our functional and business users. The Business Objects adoption was not extensive due to difficulty in learning and using. The scalability, deployment & the costs were too high for rolling out BI down the level in the organization," added Panchal. The company deployed MAIA Intelligence's 1KEY BI reporting and analytics software as it fitted well within the company's budget and could reach users inside the enterprise as well as beyond. Panchal said, "1KEY BI delivers information we could trust, provides faster, better, secured, and personalized reports to do business. We could get all users on same page with 1KEY's role based hierarchical reporting." Benefits: With 1KEY BI, getting the desired report was just a few clicks away and data presentation was visually stunning. It enables extraction of data from ERP and presents it in the format one always desires. It also offers flexibility to the users to present data in different formats. It reduces latency and increase business value. The 'scheduler' feature automates the process of reporting by pushing reports on a user specified periodicity. Besides this, KEY BI also has various other features such as view, cube, chart, file reader, and query builder with user based hierarchical security. It is user friendly, scalable, easy to use, deploy, and maintain. It also allows multi dimensional reports and provides graphical representation of data. "More than 1200 operational users across the domain such as sales, finance, purchase, and inventory are no more dependent on the IT team for reports. Within two days of training, business users were running 1KEY BI software," added Panchal. With 1KEY Pidilite can give its business users the power to define, generate ad hoc reports through an intuitive and highly interactive interface. When it comes to customer relationship Panchal says Pidilite's customers today demand to know how the company operates and want to track the performance. Using 1KEY BI solution has helped Pidilite publish information on web securely with analytics. This has increased the company's ability to share information with customers. About the Deal: MAIA team started the POC in July 2006. Pidilite could complete 170 set of reports roll out in just 3 months. Within 6 months Pidilite was up and running. SNAPSHOT Pidilite Industries is the market leader in adhesives and sealants, construction chemicals, hobby colors, and polymer emulsions in India. Its brand name, 'Fevicol', has become synonymous with adhesives to millions in India and is ranked amongst the most trusted brands in India. Since its inception in 1959, Pidilite Industries has been a pioneer in consumer and speciality chemicals in India. Over two-third of the company's sales come from products and segments it has pioneered in India. The company's product range includes adhesives and sealants, construction and paint chemicals, automotive chemicals, art materials, industrial adhesives, industrial and textile resins, and organic pigments and preparations. Most of the products have been developed through strong in-house R&D. Challenges: * The business users faced various challenges like inventory maintenance, data mining, in depth and ample analysis of the data available * Needed a BI solution that would allow multiple informative reporting options for strategy framing * The senior management faced the challenge of getting filtered data and in the desired form * Faced challenge in terms of having single unified view of two different data sources, ensuring that the data is consistent, accurate, and reliable Solution: Pidilite deployed MAIA Intelligence's 1KEY BI reporting and analytics software Benefits: * It also offers flexibility to the users to present data in different formats * It reduces latency and increase business value * The 'scheduler' feature automates the process of reporting by pushing reports on a user specified periodicity * It is user friendly, scalable, easy to use, deploy, and maintain * It also allows multi dimensional reports and provides graphical representation of data * It allows business users the power to define, generate ad hoc reports through an intuitive and highly interactive interface * It enables to publish information on web securely with analytics, thereby increasing the company's ability to share information with customers Related Links: Pidilite to Stick Processes with Linux & SAP Nortel's SSL VPN to Automate Pidilite Sales Force