Challenge

The main business of Post Danmark is to provide postal services. The company is carrying out business
within distribution, communication, transport and logistics, and since 1995, Post Danmark has been operating on a commercial basis with competitors in most areas. The postal services business is changing rapidly. With intensified competition from private companies and with letter volumes declining three to or four percent annually, it is necessary for Post Danmark to make efficiency improvements. A key element in Post Danmark’s effort to streamline the business is the implementation of SAP and Business Objects. In the past, Post Danmark used ad-hoc tools, including spreadsheets, to consolidate business information. The structure was decentralized and important information scattered throughout the organization. As a consequence, different sources could contain conflicting information, and it was unclear who was responsible for various activities and for follow-up on data and events.

Approach Business Objects makes data accessible

With Business Objects Professional on top of the Post Danmark’s strategic Data Warehouse, the 362 million rows of transaction data becomes easily accessible to the business. Since the introduction of Business Objects five years ago, business intelligence has come to be an integrated part of Post
Danmark’s IT strategy. Today Business Objects Professional is a cornerstone in both strategic activities and day-today operations, including:

1. Post Danmark’s Centers for Transport and Letter Production are handling four million letters daily, and to ensure efficient operation, the centers are required to provide near-realtime reports about volumes of letters. From the moment data about incoming mail is generated in the Data Warehouse to Business Objects reports are available is a window of just 15 minutes. With Business Objects Professional, Post Danmark is able to meet the strict 15-minute Service Level Agreement and generate the required report from 13 million rows— every day.
    
2. Courier Express and Packages is responsible for handling 150.000 parcels on a daily basis. With a rise in online trade and a gradual decline in the amount of letters, the importance of parcel post is increasing. The requirements are similar to those placed on the letter centers. Business Objects reports are available 15 minutes after the data is generated in the Data Warehouse.
    
3. The Distribution Centers need exact and up-to-the-minute information about the amount of mail produced everyday to plan resources for the daily delivery to end-customers. Business Objects Professional offers an intuitive interface to waste amounts of information. In addition to the operational dayto- day support, Business Objects is also playing a crucial role in the longer term planning in Post Danmark’s Finance and Planning Department. All the information about incoming and outgoing mail and post-office transactions are stored in an Oracle Data Warehouse. In term Business Objects Professional enable Post Danmark Finance and Planning to extract the required information to make statistical analysis and thereby secure efficient resource allocation and recognition of the strongest performing centers. One of the major challenges in Post Danmark’s business and IT environment is to accommodate both the short-term and operational needs of mail centers and the strategic and less time-dependent needs of the Finance and Planning Department. If a production manager does not get his information within 15 minutes, it has no value. On the other hand, the Finance and Planning Department just needs a monthly report. Business Objects Professional offers the facilities to turn data into useful information for all departments.

Results Transforming Postal Services with Business Objects XI

Post Danmarks business intelligence journey started with the distributed and fragmented approach to data handling. With Business Objects tools, the data has become increasingly consolidated and organized. With the SAP Competence Center spearheading the development, Post Danmark is gearing up to implement more advanced Business Objects XI facilities. Performance Management and Datamining with Business Objects XI represent just two of the areas with the potential to move Post Danmark to the next level of business intelligence.

Affecto and the Post Danmark Solution

Affecto and Post Danmark has a long term partnership which began back in 1998, when Post Danmark based
on a thorough study of BI vendors and their ratings from Analyst Institutes, selected Affecto to deliver and implement their Data Warehouse solution, based on Informatica Power Center and Business Objects.
“For Post Danmark it is important that we have access to skilled and experienced consultants, to support us in our continued development of stateof- the-art solutions. The local support is critical for us, high availability and performance is crucial in our solutions and therefore we need a partner that we can trust to react on problems immediately. This is some of the reasons why we continue to partner with Affecto,” says Martin Ytting Post Danmark.