Arcelor
Improved service
at reduced IT cost
| CUSTOMER CASE |
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Industry
Manufacturing
Business Issue
Give users the tools to create their own business
reports while ensuring correct data.
Solution
SAS® BI Dashboard
Benefits
1. Improved reporting quality and speed :
the SAS BI Dashboard enables users to
design their own Web reports with charts
and graphs.
2. Cost reduction :
IT focuses on its core business, not on
presentation issues.
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SAS and ASG let users create their own web reports
Improve IT service for users at the same time you cut costs. It can be
done. Arcelor Systems Genk provides its users with a fast and flexible
opportunity to create their own tailor-made business reports.
Meanwhile, the IT department ensures that the data is correct and
staff stays focused on its core business. It’s a perfect win-win solution
for both the IT department and users, thanks to the SAS® Business
Intelligence Dashboard.
SAS and ASG let users create their own web reports
Arcelor Systems Genk (ASG) is a Business
Intelligence Competence Center
within ArcelorMittal, the world’s number
one steel company. Being a shared
service of the group, ASG is committed
to delivering cost-efficient and highly
effective business intelligence (BI) solutions,
which include powerful SAS data
warehousing and reporting tools.
User reports on Web pages
It is a long-term strategy of ASG to
power up users to the maximum. “We
are continuously striving to put more
reporting capabilities into the hands of
our users,” says Team Manager Kris
Vranken. “The users don’t want to depend
on available IT resources and we
want to concentrate on our own core
IT tasks.” The solutions that SAS has to
offer, combined with their Microsoft Office
add-ins, have always helped Vranken
successfully meet thischallenge.
“These tools enable users without
any specific IT skills to select and aggregate
the data, prepare reports, and
output them in various ways, such as
Excel sheets and associated graphs.”
ASG now intends to go one step further
and enable users to directly create
their own Web reports using the new
SAS® BI Dashboard solution. According
to Kris Vranken, “the new SAS BI
Dashboard promised to deliver just
that and to become the crown jewel
in our overall solution. Our initial tests
have proven that SAS BI Dashboard is
powerful yet easy to use.”
Concentrate on core business
Thanks to SAS BI Dashboard, report
presentations can be done by the endusers
without direct support from IT
staff at ASG. This frees up time for ASG
to concentrate on their core business,
which is making sure that the servers
are running, the software is updated,
and that correct data is available. “This
is especially important at a time of decreasing
IT budgets set against ever
expanding user demands,” notes Kris
Vranken. “After all, ASG is a separate
business unit and has to be as competitive
as any third party.”
Improved reporting quality and speed
The solution is also a winner for the
end-user, because they are now in full
command of their own Web reporting.
They can create exactly the reports
they want, deciding about presentation
issues like colors and graph types. And
they can create them whenever they
need them because they don’t have
to wait for IT support to become available.
In short, the SAS BI Dashboard
has significantly improved reporting
quality and speed.
With the successful test of the SAS
BI Dashboard, Kris Vranken will now
launch a campaign to educate his users
on all of the advantages of the new
system. “A first pilot implementation has
immediately proven its value. My users
will immediately be persuaded once
they see how easy it is to create visual
Web reports on complex business indicators
such as site performances or
cost evolutions.”
SAS PROVES TO BE
A BUSINES WINNER
Kris Vranken and his team have lived in
a challenging business environment in
recent years which has changed from
being an IT department of a Belgian
stainless steel producer to an independent
business unit of the world’s
largest steel company. In this globally
competitive world, it is absolutely essential
to be able
to deliver intelligent
and cost-effective
solutions.
In this respect
SAS has always
been a business
winner for Vranken
and his team.
Things move fast
in today’s steel
business. Only
five years ago, Kris
Vranken worked
for the IT department
of stainless
steel sheet
producer ALZ in
Genk, Belgium. ALZ first merged with
the French stainless steel producer
Ugine and then was integrated into
Arcelor, adopting the name Arcelor
Systems Genk (ASG). Today ASG is
an independent Business Intelligence
Competence Center within ArcelorMittal,
the world’s number one steel company
with 320,000 employees in more
than 60 countries.
Swiss knife
Through all of these changes, Kris
Vranken has successfully
relied on
SAS solutions. He
has been working
with SAS since
1994 and in 1998
used it to build the
first data warehouse
for ALZ.
This proved to be
particularly critical
in the successful
integration of the
IT systems of ALZ
and Ugine when
that merger took
place in 2002.
Vranken recalls
that, “given the
strength and reliability
of our system, Ugine decided to
adopt our SAS data warehouse. We
even managed to enable the Ugine staff
to continue using their existing reporting
tool, but now based on our SAS
data warehouse. This clearly demonstrates
how flexible SAS is. In fact, to
me SAS is as flexible and versatile as
the Swiss Army Knife in my pocket. I
would hate to be without it.”
New business perspectives
The SAS solutions not only survived
the mergers, they opened additional
new business perspectives for ASG
within ArcelorMittal. As an example,
Kris Vranken explains that his team
now runs an important program for
ArcelorMittal HR Corporate, again using
the data warehouse capabilities of
SAS. “We collect all relevant information
about employees worldwide into
a single data warehouse. This includes
information about the employee’s
current working location, his or her
qualifications, and their willingness to
transfer to another site or country. SAS
enables us to complete such projects
over a short period of time, making us
extremely efficient. It has unquestionably
made our solution the most competitive
in the business.”
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