Coats identified the need for improved reporting for sales (including cost of sales), and after asking Bluefin to produce a proposal for delivering this improvement, engaged us to assist in building an SAP BW solution; go live was required in 6 weeks for 2 European countries, with a short rollout phase following the go live. 

Benefits realised

Following a successful implementation, Coats now has:

• Full visibility of sales in 2 European countries
• A solution that can roll out in line with the global R/3 system at minimal additional cost
• Proved that SAP BW is a viable platform for global reporting
• Established an environment for further reporting such as inventory management

Bluefin followed our own best practice recommendations, and:

• Rapidly agreed business requirements and designed the necessary cubes based on these, business content was an important tool in this process.
• Delivered a series of changes to business content required to fit the Coats business (for example, custom units of measure, custom business partners, reporting simultaneously in 3 currencies, and various enhancements to master data)
• Worked closely with a ?key central user?, initially focusing on the information requirements rather than specific reporting formats
• Worked closely with Coats staff to transfer knowledge
• Achieved signoff in the week before Christmas, slightly ahead of time and budget, and took the BW system technically live
• Initially delivered the solution to UK-based technical users, who assisted in the rollout of the solution to business users in the countries in the New Year.  
• Produced Coats specific report templates were created in both Excel and ?BEx? and a simple role structure set up to ensure users could only see data from their sales organisation.

Bluefin provided expert consultancy resource to assist Coats in delivering this successful project, and also executed a technical audit of the BW system to ensure that it was set up according to BW Best Practice.

Background

Coats have been users of SAP for 4-5 years and rolled out SAP R/3 3.1i across many countries for logistics, finance, production planning and materials management. Traditionally, Coats has relied on a mixture of ABAP and SIS reporting for sales information, meaning that some Coats users are experienced with simple business intelligence techniques. They are currently rolling out SAP r/3 v4.6 as part of a global upgrade and harmonisation project.

About Coats

Coats plc is the world?s largest manufacturer of industrial sewing thread and consumer needlecraft products. They are also the world?s fastest growing manufacturer of top quality zip fasteners. Coats are the clear global market leader in thread. They have a 22% global market share and operations in 65 countries. Nearly every single person in these countries uses the products Coats manufacture either directly or indirectly.