“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
– Peter Drucker
Every C-suite dreams of a dashboard that not only provides measurements on key metrics, but provides them instantly and accurately. In an era of big data and real-time analytics, why shouldn’t these dreams come true? Unfortunately, thanks to issues around disparate IT system landscapes and data integrity, building a solid foundation for an executive dashboard like this is difficult. No wonder advanced analytics and business intelligent solutions consistently ranks top in IT investments, according to Forrester research.
For MediaTek, a global market leader in fabless chip design, real-time visibility into their supply chain and sales pipeline is vital for maintaining their competitive advantage. Now, after collaborating with SAP to create a custom executive dashboard based on SAP HANA, what once took days to report takes only minutes, and what was once ambiguous is now crystal clear. For MediaTek, turning real-time data into real-time decisions is the ultimate dream come true.
The Road to HANA
With over seven billion dollars in revenue in 2015, MediaTek is a Taiwanese tech giant. The company’s IT department had been searching for an optimal enterprise data warehouse solution, and carefully evaluated and tested several solutions offered in the marketplace. After deciding that SAP HANA best met their needs, MediaTek started on a journey with SAP in the summer of 2015 to create a state of the art, custom-designed analytics dashboard.
The Challenges
• Simplify IT landscape, minimize the disruption of current ERP setup, and enable real-time business intelligence.
• Gain visibility into MediaTek’s three key business areas (finance, supply chain, and sales).
• Reveal real-time insights for executive decision making, with an easy to use, responsive analytic dashboard.
The Outcomes
• Consolidated data across the IT landscape, creating one single source of truth and a data foundation with SAP HANA.
• A comprehensive business intelligence (BI) layer and self-service tools so end-users can discover data and create analytics.
• A role-based and mobile ready executive dashboard built with SAP Fiori design that provides insights anytime, anywhere.
Understanding the end-users’ true needs is essential to a good design, so designers from SAP’s Design and Co-Innovation Center (DCC) were onsite at MediaTek’s headquarters in Hsinchu, Taiwan for two weeks. During that time, the design team held four design thinking workshops, conducted 15 user interviews, and ideated with employees and executives throughout the MediaTek organization. SAP and MediaTek then co-created quick prototypes and held validations sessions to ensure they were on the right track.
I really appreciated the SAP DCC team introducing the design thinking approach to us. This way of working brings IT closer to our business users, and we are now able to openly communicate our business needs into designs. It’s been a great experience!
– EJ Yang, IT ERP Manager, MediaTek
The design team took their research and artifacts home to SAP AppHaus Palo Alto and started a three-month design phase. Overcoming a 15-hour time difference and 6,000-miles of physical distance, the collaboration continued, reviewing designs, discussing business content, and ensuring the technical feasibility of solutions.
After completing and validating the designs, the SAP service team in Taiwan began an eight-month-long implementation process. They created data models using SAP Business Objects Design Studio, built data views, and enabled real-time visualization of charts and graphics. The outcome is a beautiful executive dashboard containing 20 important KPIs.
The users from three business units – finance, sales, and manufacturing – can personalize their KPI tiles according to their needs. Each tile on the dashboard presents one KPI, and users can drill down on the graphics for further information, enabling them to find out the root cause of the issue and conduct a “what-if” analysis.
MediaTek is live on the dashboard and happy with its performance, according to Kirin Liu, Assistant General Manager of MediaTek.
“I wish [we] had done this HANA dashboard project with SAP earlier. What used to take us days to report now takes minutes!” said Liu. “I hope to continue with this partnership in additional innovation topics, such as IoT!”