Sunstone implements Cognos BI at Lafarge South Africa

Building material giant, Lafarge South Africa, has invested in a Sunstone business intelligence solution to enable the extraction of critical information and the transformation of that information into meaningful reports.

Sunstone, a provider of tools and services for measurement and management of business strategies, has supplied and implemented a powerful Cognos business intelligence (BI) application that has reduced the time-to-information gap, in other words it has improved reporting capabilities and given all users clear insight into key functional processes.

Lafarge Group is one of the largest diversified suppliers of building material products and the world`s largest supplier of cement. Lafarge South Africa looked to Sunstone Solutions for a packaged, end-to-end solution that would work in conjunction with its existing JD Edwards ERP system to help decision-makers throughout the enterprise to make better, more co-ordinated business decisions.

"We needed to provide strategic decision support environments across all our divisions," says Maria Sazeides of Lafarge Cement. "Our objective was to ensure that our business questions could be answered by providing consistency and flexibility across the organisation."

The solution must be packaged to simplify and speed the implementation and roll-out, she explains. "The Cognos toolset more than meets the challenge by giving us the ability to find added value in our business and to identify opportunities for creating new value."

Using Cognos Impromptu and PowerPlay, Lafarge Cement is now able to analyse data to determine market trends, run comparative analysis by location, date, or season and track sales, explains Sazeides. "We are then able to quickly build reports and distribute them over the Web to the users.

"Lafarge Cement`s ability to analyse information to better serve its users has definite advantages. Because of these tools, Lafarge can quickly consolidate and effectively use its collected data, which is a requirement in the modern business environment," she adds. "Sunstone and Cognos have provided an end-to-end solution that encompasses our report building needs.

"Cognos` analysis and reporting tools allow us to drill down into the granular level of transactions and deliver a single, consolidated view of the business to decision-makers."

She believes that Sunstone understands the principles of business and understands her firm`s business needs. "It offers competitive rates, provides excellent service and has a professional approach. We feel its consultants are part of our team."

"Business performance in today`s economy depends primarily on a company`s ability to turn investments into results," comments Alan Williams, MD of Sunstone Solutions. "This challenge has been met head-on by seamlessly integrating Cognos with existing business intelligence infrastructure, resulting in pre-packaged reports that deliver rapid time to results for the user.

"More and more companies like Lafarge South Africa are grasping the competitive advantage offered by this solution and providing users with instant access to information that is driving critical decision-making," he concludes.