Business Intelligence Upgrade Project
The Client
About
Babcock
For over a century Babcock has been a name synonymous with ultra-reliable engineering excellence. Today, Babcock is the UK’s leading engineering support services organisation with revenue of circa £3 billion in 2013 and an order book of circa £12 billion.
Babcock takes great pride in the considerable depth and breadth of their peoples’ expertise. They have over 25,000 skilled staff workers who design, build, manage, operate and maintain assets that are vital to the delivery of many key public services, both in the UK and overseas. Babcock’s market-leading reputation is based on one key fact: Babcock is a partner which can be trusted to deliver.
The Challenge
Babcock’s Devonport facility in Plymouth has historically been the central hub for Babcock’s operational reporting, providing critical information on their Supply Chain, Manufacturing Processes, Projects and Human Resources.
Historically SAP® Crystal Reports® has been deployed extensively to provide these departments with business critical information. For example, we automatically run a Crystal Report that management uses to monitor radiation exposure levels of engineers working on submarines, ensuring that they are kept well within stringent safety limits.Senior Application Team Leader, Babcock International
At Babcock, there are over 120 ‘super-users’ spread throughout the organisation who are capable of writing reports.
You could say that Crystal is the reporting standard here at Babcock. It runs through our veins, and has done for over a decade.Senior Application Team Leader, Babcock International
Many of these users were running old unsupported versions, and the central platform for sharing reports was out of date. Babcock’s initial challenge was to upgrade to the latest version of the SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise platform, and bring everyone up to the same level.
The risk of being unsupported in the event of a critical system outage meant we could combine the project with a wider modernisation initiative. However although we were keen to upgrade to the newest version of SAP BusinessObjects, due to pressures from other projects we had limited resource and time available to carry out the upgrade. We therefore needed to work with a partner that could help us move forward.Senior Application Team Leader, Babcock International
The team at Babcock was also keen to understand the technology advances made with the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) suite and how they might integrate key features to improve their day-to-day management information systems.
The Solution
Making it Work
As part of an overall review, Babcock looked at what else the Business Intelligence marketplace had to offer and evaluated the services of a number of different solution providers. Due to the business critical nature of the upgrade project, it was imperative that they found the right partner with the right type of experience.
Codestone had a strong reputation as an SAP Partner, and their consultants had previously worked with Babcock and were aware of our processes. This gave us confidence that they were capable of delivering on their promises. Another key consideration for choosing Codestone was the locality. As they are based just twenty miles away, and have field based consultants near our data centres, it made for a practical partnership.
For this project Codestone selected their BI Methodology based on PRINCE2, which was in line with Babcock’s preferred standard.
To kick-off the process and orientate them on the advances in SAP BusinessObjects technology, Codestone hosted a ‘Show and Tell Workshop’ to demonstrate SAP BusinessObjects BI to the Babcock team and share with them how the enhanced features could benefit their organisation based upon current and future challenges.
When we visited Codestone at their offices for the Workshop, they worked in a relaxed environment and made us feel very welcome. In addition to demonstrating the new features of SAP BusinessObjects BI, Codestone introduced the concepts for improved data access and governance and how it might integrate with our SharePoint architecture. We had 8 team members present, representing multiple facilities across the UK, so this approach worked really well for us. We were very happy with the way it all went.
Codestone went on to define the solution architecture and implement the software, working closely with Babcock’s project team to roll out the new solution and further enable the team to become proficient in leveraging the new features and administering the server and its users through custom training and mentoring sessions.
Benefits
Babcock’s relationship with Codestone continues to flourish and both companies intend to work in partnership to tackle new information challenges as they arise, through the use of new appropriate innovations from SAP, as they emerge onto the market.
Babcock is extremely satisfied with the services and support provided by Codestone. They delivered to budget and on time, going above and beyond the call of duty to ensure a successful roll out of this new technology across our organisation – not an easy task!
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