CASE STUDY
optimises the price-performance ratio on its
storage environment.
Steffl added: “We rely exclusively on
IBM storage because it provides superb
performance and reliability for business-
critical applications such as our SAP systems.”
RESULT
OVER THE YEARS, IBM HAS
CONSISTENTLY DEMONSTRATED THAT
IT OFFERS OUTSTANDING EXPERTISE
AND THE BEST VALUE FOR MONEY.
Mondi was already mature in terms of
business intelligence. However, for executives
at Mondi, upgrading to SAP HANA has
enabled faster, more convenient reporting.
“On average, reports complete three times
faster than before,” explained Steffl. “One
report is a remarkable 400 times faster than
before, while 20 reports are over 100 times
quicker and 185 reports complete between
10 and 100 times faster than before.
In the areas where we were already using
SAP Business Warehouse Accelerator,
reporting is on average 2.2 times faster,
while in other areas, report completion
is on average 3.5 times faster. These are
exceptional achievements, because business
users can gain rapid insight into their data.
By reducing the time that these employees
spend preparing their queries and waiting
during system response times, we are saving
200 person-hours per month. That frees
up more time to allow people to perform
detailed scrutiny of the figures and react to
their findings.”
Steffl continued: “The impact has been
particularly noticeable in monthly executive
meetings. Every second saved on report
generation is much appreciated because it
helps managers make important decisions
faster and work more productively.
Keeping our SAP Business Warehouse
application available and running fast is
vital, because it’s the source of every single
report that senior executives use to support
decision-making. Even short delays or brief
downtimes can have a severe impact on
our business. Because SAP HANA provides
an extremely reliable platform for the SAP
Business Warehouse solution, we have
peace of mind that everything will continue
working as it should.”
With the ultra-powerful IBM and SAP
solution in place, Mondi is now searching
66
INTELLIGENTCIO
for new ways to further sharpen its
competitive edge.
“Next, we plan to combine data from
sensors on our manufacturing equipment
with commercial information such as sales
figures,” added Steffl. “Traditional business
intelligence solutions are not capable of
handling the kind of data volumes we’re
talking about, but with SAP HANA and IBM
POWER8 we will be able to gain valuable
insights to help us boost profitability.”
As a next step, Mondi is planning to further
explore the potential of cognitive computing
to boost efficiency.
“We are currently running a proof of concept
with IBM Watson,” added Steffl. “With SAP
HANA we can combine sensor data with
commercial data to drive analytics in the
area of real-time costing and optimisation
of production. We believe that IBM Watson
technology will enable us to bring intelligent
applications on top of that data. We also
believe that, since we have a huge amount of
data, technology is much smarter in finding
correlations than humans could ever be. IBM
Watson will be the game-changer. We plan
to run IBM Watson on top of SAP HANA to
deliver actionable insights even faster.”
Steffl concluded: “We are very happy with the
service we receive from IBM and SAP. These
companies give us innovative solutions that
underpin our entire business and for over a
decade IBM has helped us complete complex
technology projects that deliver real value to
our business. With IBM and SAP at our side,
we can achieve our dreams.” n
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