Crystal clear reporting at local auto manufacturing giant

The Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa, has implemented Seagate Software`s Crystal Reports 8 reporting tool in a bid to maximise the value of its Baan ERP system.

"Following the launch of our purchasing system, we realised we were unable to provide our end-users with a flexible, self-service reporting solution that would support the daily monitoring and tracking of key business metrics. While Baan does have this functionality, it does not offer the flexibility we required to meet all our reporting needs," says Riaan Kleinsmith, Systems Development Manager at Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa.

"As a solution we implemented Baan`s Data Navigator (BDN) as our standard ad-hoc reporting tool. We soon realised that we had to do development work via a SQL-style interface to augment the BDN drag-and-drop reporting capabilities. Although the product does provide the functionality to develop SQL-style reports, the imbedded query language was limited by the fact that it could not support all our reporting requirements" It was then that the decision was taken to augment the BDN reporting tool with Seagate Software`s Crystal Reports. "We currently have 15 staff trained on the system," he reveals.

The Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa now has a hyper-relational drag-and-drop-reporting tool via BDN enhancing its Baan ERP package, along with Seagate Software`s Crystal Reports - further extending the Company`s web-based reporting solution.

"ERP systems have become a competitive necessity, basically an enabler for concepts like E-business, Customer Relations Management (CRM), Business Intelligence (BI) and Knowledge Management (KM). Competitive advantage is derived once you start deploying concepts like BI, in other words deploying software that would enable the mining of data, basically turning data into information to support the business decision making process."

"ERP is a strategic investment for us and the use of Seagate Software`s application is in line with our drive to implement a complete BI system," he says.

What this may entail is turning Reports loose on legacy and ERP data to give the company the strategic BI info to maintain its competitive edge. "Our reports are now multi-dimensional in nature," says Kleinsmith. "We get the large number-crunching done using Baan, but for daily reports, executive information, and end-user ad-hoc query report generation, Crystal Reports shines," he says.

"Through BDN and Crystal Reports we have achieved our objective of providing our customers with a self-service, web-based reporting solution" says Kleinsmith.

"Now that the company`s ERP implementation is almost fully deployed, we believe demand and use of Crystal Reports will grow. It`s the first time we have given an end-user access to such a tool."

Inthiaz Cassimjee, sales manager, Africa and Middle East at Seagate Software, says that with its interface to Baan, Seagate Reports provides customers with access, analysis, reporting and information sharing functionality.

"This solution provides customers with intuitive decision-making capabilities and competitive advantage. With access to Seagate Reports BI capabilities, The Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa can expect an enhanced return on its investment in Baan," concludes Paul Marketos, MD of ASYST International SA.

ASYST International is an authorised Seagate Software partner and assisted in product sales, training and consultation of Crystal Reports and Seagate Info at Ford.