BP Lubricants established the BIGS program following recent merger activity to deliver globally consistent and transparent management information. As well as timely BI, BIGS provides detailed, consistent views of performance across functions such as finance, marketing, sales, and supply and logistics. BP is one of the world’s largest oil and petrochemicals groups. Part of the BP plc group, BP Lubricants is an established leader in the global automotive lubricants market. Perhaps best known for its Castrol brand of oils, the business operates in over 100 countries and employs 10,000 people. Strategically, BP Lubricants is concentrating on further improving its customer focus and increasing its effectiveness in automotive markets. Following recent merger activity, the company is undergoing a transformation to become more effective and agile and to seize opportunities for rapid growth. Challenge Following recent merger activity, BP Lubricants wanted to improve the consistency, transparency, and accessibility of management information and BI. To do so, it needed to integrate data held in disparate source systems, without the delay of introducing a standardized ERP system. Solution BP Lubricants implemented the pilot for its Business Intelligence and Global Standards (BIGS) program, a strategic initiative for management information and BI. At the heart of BIGS is Kalido, an adaptive EDW solution for preparing, implementing, operating, and managing data warehouses. Kalido’s federated EDW solution supported the pilot program’s complex data integration and diverse reporting requirements. To adapt to the program’s evolving reporting requirements, the software also enabled the underlying information architecture to be easily modified at high speed while preserving all information. The system integrates and stores information from multiple source systems to provide consolidated views for: • Marketing Customer proceeds and margins for market segments with drill-down to invoice-level detail • Sales Invoice reporting augmented with both detailed tariff costs and actual payments • Finance Globally standard profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow statements—with audit ability; customer debt management supply and logistics; consolidated view of order and movement processing across multiple ERP platforms Benefits By improving the visibility of consistent, timely data, BIGS provides the information needed to assist the business in identifying a multitude of business opportunities to maximize margins and/or manage associated costs. Typical responses to the benefits of consistent data resulting from the BIGS pilot include the following: • Improved consistency and transparency of business data • Easier, faster, and more flexible reporting • Accommodation of both global and local standards • Fast, cost-effective, and flexible implementation cycle • Minimal disruption of existing business processes and the day-to-day business • Identification of data quality issues and encourages their resolution • Improved ability to respond intelligently to new business opportunities
Questions for Discussion
1. What is BIGS?
2. What were the challenges, the proposed solution, and the obtained results with BIGS?