Simplot chooses IBM Business Analytics Software

Simplot Australia has selected IBM Cognos 8 as its new enterprise business intelligence (BI) tool.

The company was founded in 1995 when the JR Simplot Company acquired some of Australia’s favourite food brand businesses including Edgell, Chiko, Birds Eye, Harvest, Plumrose and Leggo’s. From that time it has continued to develop through acquisition of businesses such as John West and product innovation.

Simplot has purchased a 600-user licence for the software and will begin development in September 2009. Deployment will occur in conjunction with the deployment of a new enterprise resource planning system.

Initially, IBM Cognos 8 BI will be used to consolidate and enhance Simplot’s financial management reporting, providing a single view of data drawn from the company’s demand management and ERP applications. Following this the solution will be extended to all areas of the business including manufacturing, sales and operations, human resources and payroll.

Martin Nowak-Rowe, CIO - Business Transformation of Simplot Australia, said, “We will be using the ERP system for reporting on the operational and transactional aspects of our business but when it comes to high-level decision making or identifying and analysing trends we need BI. We selected IBM because it is robust and a significant player in the market. We see it as an investment for the long term.”

A major factor in the decision was the IBM Cognos Financial Performance Analytics module with its series of pre-built adaptable reports for transactional system data. The reports will help to reduce development time and costs, offering Simplot a faster time-to-value.

The ready availability of suitable BI skills – both among consultants and prospective employees – was an important consideration, as were software independence and ease of integration. Simplot wanted a solution that would easily integrate with a variety of applications and stipulated that it had to be independent of any existing systems already in use at the company.

Nowak-Rowe added, “This long-term project is all about decision making and using information. It’s about people not spending their time collating and formatting data but rather having them analyse information so that they can obtain value from it. We expect that IBM Cognos 8 BI will assist us by combining all the different types of data within our business and making it possible for us to identify process and planning efficiencies.”