Hitachi?s multiple business groups operate across all industries and, as different industry groups often have little in common, they require several different business solutions. Hitachi Europe Ltd is Hitachi?s regional HQ for Europe and contains some of the business groups, which are all served by a Shared Service based on SAP applications and SAP NetWeaver.

Hitachi Europe Ltd engaged Bluefin Solutions to streamline their senior management reporting capability with an innovative Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solution, based on SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence and Enterprise Portal.

Meeting the challenges of diversity

The diverse nature of Hitachi?s business is one of its great strengths and contained within the organisation are many business groups, many of which could be regarded as industry leaders in their own right. Senior executives at Hitachi Europe Ltd, which contains a number of separate business groups, found that such diversity creates some unique issues.

Each business group justifiably operates with a high level of local autonomy and requires different business solutions and discrete systems. EPM was seen as an answer to the problems inherent in managing a matrix structure across the European region, where the Board needs to consolidate opportunities for improving business performance, reducing costs or identifying key areas for investment.

Bluefin Solutions helped us to achieve our business objective of establishing a platform for information sharing and performance management ? and they helped us do that quickly and to budget.