Business Intelligence Powers New Reporting Capabilities

Shikoku Energizes Spreadsheet Creation With WebFOCUS

Part of the Yonden Group, Shikoku Electric is a leading multi-utility company that plays an integral part in the lives of its customers in Shikoku, Japan. In 2004, when Shikoku adopted SAP R/3 as a new management system for the entire group, the company also introduced a reporting tool for creating spreadsheets. Three years later, Shikoku decided to upgrade its SAP R/3 enterprise reporting (ERP) system, and began searching for a new, compatible spreadsheet creation tool.

Reasons for Choosing WebFOCUS

On the recommendation of Information Builders' Japanese representative K.K. Ashisuto, Shikoku chose the WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) platform because of its stability, average response time of two seconds, rapid and complete technical support, compatibility with Excel, and its support for SAP R/3 in terms of data accessibility and security management. Today, WebFOCUS provides 9,000 employees in various Yonden Group companies with the ability to cost-effectively create spreadsheets.

With WebFOCUS, Shikoku was able to develop spreadsheets without having to add programs to SAP R/3. WebFOCUS allows users to output and reprocess data in Excel using standard functions. Also, the platform's security functions, allowing data browsing exclusively to specified users, could be achieved in cooperation with SAP R/3.

"We tried to avoid adding programs to SAP R/3 and developing security measures by ourselves, in order to save costs and man-hours [needed] to develop and maintain them," said Masahito Mino, ERP system operation group leader, Information System Division, in Shikoku's IT Department. "We wanted to use a tool with those functions from the beginning. WebFOCUS satisfied all the requirements and, in addition, using its spreadsheet options, this tool [produced] high-quality, detailed spreadsheets. Therefore, we chose WebFOCUS as [the] final candidate."

Mino calls Information Builders' WebFOCUS the "final candidate" because the IT system department planned to make a final decision after thoroughly examining the platform's functionality. Using a trial version, they developed various spreadsheet forms and tested performance in a simulated environment.

"During trial operation, we thoroughly examined its performance, supporting system, and functions to create spreadsheet forms," said Yuushi Murakami, ERP system operation group subleader, Information System Division, in Shikoku's IT Department. "After going through all these procedures, we decided to employ WebFOCUS. WebFOCUS seemed to be easy to learn how to operate. In addition, output never had an adverse impact on performance.

The Results of Introduction

In August 2008, WebFOCUS was actually implemented before the SAP R/3 upgrade. WebFOCUS was used as the infrastructure behind spreadsheet output, and users from nine Yonden Group companies used the system daily.

There were approximately 120 spreadsheets for batch processing and online processing. Spreadsheets for batch processing were output 200 times while those online were output 3,000 times daily using the reporting tool. Those spreadsheets were used by the group companies, and were essential as the very infrastructure of business.

"At the end of the fiscal year, spreadsheet output surged because many [employees] use the tool," said Teruyuki Hamaue, ERP system operation group, Information System Division, in Shikoku's IT Department. "The ERP system operation group expected some troubles with the system during this period and prepared countermeasures, but nothing happened. Since the introduction of WebFOCUS, operation of the infrastructure for spreadsheet output has required little effort; this system is very reliable."

Response time was always two seconds on average, which decreased the load on the SAP R/3 server and significantly reduced the required man-hours. The company plans to develop new spreadsheets to improve data-browsing capabilities for group members.