BI tool helps batmaker knock out reports

24.02.2005
Von Thomas Hoffman

With spring training for Major League Baseball in full swing, executives at batmaker Hillerich & Bradsby Co. say they are now better positioned to analyze and react quickly to changes in sales and inventory -- thanks to the company"s recent adoption of a business intelligence tool from Information Builders Inc.

Scott Robinson, assistant controller for the maker of Louisville Slugger bats, began using New York-based Information Builders" WebFocus tool last summer. Robinson is responsible for compiling multiple reports at the beginning of each month for Hillerich & Bradsby"s corporate and business-unit executives, including plant production, gross profit margin, sales and inventory reports.

The Louisville, Ky.-based company produces roughly 1 million wood bats and 1.5 million aluminum bats each year, said Robinson.

Robinson has been assembling these reports on his PC ever since Hillerich & Bradsby implemented an SAP AG enterprise resource planning system in 1998. But it often took Robinson two full business days to pull the data from multiple systems and compile the reports. With that in mind, he approached the company"s president and got approval to select and install a reporting tool that would help him crank out reports faster.

After a head-to-head cost comparison with eight other vendors, Robinson picked WebFocus. He uses the software to compile data from various finance and production systems and develops the reports as Excel and PDF files for company executives, who can access them over the Web using password-encrypted browsers.

Robinson estimated that the WebFocus tool is saving him six to eight hours per month in generating reports -- the equivalent of one full workday. That time savings can be critical to line managers and senior executives if a shift in sales or an influx of orders for bats forces the company to redistribute manufacturing across one or more of its 10 plants in North America.

"If there"s a huge problem, they know about it right away," said Robinson.