Customer
Blue Waters Products Ltd.
Products/Services
Microsoft SQL Server
Industry
Manufacturing
Location
Caribbean
Overview
Blue Waters Products Ltd. needed to improve its understanding of real-time sales information for decision-making purposes. In order to address all of Blue Water Products’ needs, CRGroup leveraged Microsoft technology and worked to develop a complete solution with three separate components.
- A Data Warehouse
- Analysis Services Cubes
- Reports and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
The complete solution gives the management team real-time access to the following reports:
- Route Analysis and Route Efficiency summaries
- Day-to-day comparisons between actuals and budgets
- Sales by channel
- Sales trend
The management information system gives the Blue Water Products Management Team the ability to make informed decisions, based on accurate, up-to-date information.
Inspiring Delight Since 1999
Blue Waters Products Limited was established in 1999 in Trinidad and Tobago. Since then, it has grown to be an iconic Caribbean brand and is now the preferred brand of bottled purified drinking water in the Caribbean. The company started with just 12 employees, including just two trucks, the ensuing growth over the last 15 years led to the company now being a dominant force in the markets. Now, the company has over 500 staff.
The vision for the company is to provide one bottle a day of high-quality healthy beverages to every man, woman and child in the English speaking Caribbean. It is here, the employees of Blue Waters Products Limited find their mission, “To Profitably Inspire and Delight those we choose to serve, with Quality, Functional and Great Tasting Beverages.”
The Need for a Business Management Solution
The Caribbean water distribution business is highly competitive. In order to be successful, organizations require accurate, real-time information.
Blue Water Products, the largest water plant the Caribbean, has a diverse distribution and product range. It distributes its water, which comes in a variety of sizes and formats, to 11 regional islands. Blue Water Products used multiple systems to capture sales and delivery data; however, it needed a consolidated view of the information.
The management team needed to improve its understanding of logistics and market penetration for decision making purposes. In order to do this, they needed a way to track and report on the sales of their products to the different markets, combining the information from two separate systems: Microsoft Dynamics GP and HighJump Software.
The following information, which was stored separately in Dynamics GP and HighJump Software, was important for the business decision makers, but not easily accessible:
- Did all the trucks go out? Are the deliveries on schedule? If not, why not?
- Did the delivery trucks stop at all the customers?
- Did the truck unload all the products?
Blue Water Products employees downloaded the information from the two business systems into Excel in order to complete the required analytics. This proved to be very time consuming.
Blue Water Products needed a cost effective management solution that would not only meet its current needs, but could grow and adapt to a changing business environment.
Implementing a Solution
The first step in developing a solution for Blue Water Products involved the consultants from Corporate Renaissance Group (CRGroup) identifying the true pain points that needed to be addressed by the company. Additionally, CRGroup needed to identify the key sources of information and integration/data quality issues.
CRGroup built a data warehouse for Blue Water Products using SQL Server technology. The data warehouse imports data from two separate systems:
- Microsoft Dynamics GP – an enterprise resource planning system
- HighJump Software – supply chain management software
The data warehouse regularly refreshes the data to ensure that the most accurate information is available for analysis. In order to complete the required analysis, CRGroup designed an analysis services cube.
Finally, for reporting purposes, CRGroup built PerformancePoint Server KPIs, Scorecards and reports that are refreshed at regular intervals. The following KPIs and reports were developed:
- Route Analysis and Route Efficiency summaries
- Day-to-day comparisons between actuals and budgets
- Sales by channel
- Sales trend
Results
Easy Access to Information
The management team at Blue Water Products relies on the sales and logistical information in order to make strategic decisions for the company. The CRGroup-designed management information system gives the management team the ability to quickly access sales and distribution data for decision-making purposes.
The necessary information is presented, online, in a series of KPIs and reports which is available to the management team as needed.
Consolidation of Data
Consolidating information from the two business systems give the management team the ability to fully understand sales, logistics and market penetration for decision making purposes.
Time Savings
Accessing the reports, KPIs and other information in the data warehouse is extremely fast and simple for employees and the management. All the information, from both data sources, is available for analysis all the time.
The data is automatically refreshed in the data warehouse. Employees no longer have to use Excel to consolidate or analyze the data. They are able to quickly complete their analysis on the most accurate and up-to-date information.
“The management information platform developed by CRGroup quickly delivers the relevant information to the management team, regardless of the information source, whenever they need the information.” Dennis Roberts, Information Systems Manager – Blue Waters Products Limited
End-to-End Transformation to Help Your Business Grow
CRGroup is your trusted partner for business & technology system transformation and integration. Whether you are looking to automate business processes, move to the cloud, centralize data or more accurately report on your key performance indicators, we can help.
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