BIF Assignment Ayush

8/2/2019 BIF Assignment Ayush

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Analyzing a Business Information System

Business Informatics Assignment

Submitted by:

Ayush Mandawewala

Section A- 11008


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Company Briefing:

Unilever, British-Dutch multinational corporation that owns many of the

world's consumer product brands in foods, beverages, cleaning

agents and personal care products. Unilever is a dual-listed company consisting

of Unilever N.V. in Rotterdam, Netherlands and Unilever PLC in London, United

Kingdom. This arrangement is similar to those of Reed Elsevierand Royal Dutch

Shell prior to their unified structures. Both Unilever companies have the same

directors and effectively operate as a single business. The current non-executive

Chairman of Unilever N.V. and PLC is Michael Treschow while Paul Polman is

Group Chief Executive.

Unilever's main international competitors include Nestl and Procter & Gamble.

Business Impact Summary:

Business: Domestos, Lux, Knorr, Hellmanns, and Flora are just some of the 400

home, personal care and food products manufactured by Unilever. In North

America, the company, which operates in 100 countries around the globe, has two

distinct divisions: Unilever Best foods and Unilever Home and Personal Care

(HPC).

Challenge: To meet customer demand 150 million times a day, someone

somewhere is choosing a Unilever product the company must ensure a

constant supply of its merchandise to retail outlets around the globe. In addition

to ensuring efficient distribution, Unilever must also maintain excellent product

quality standards.

Solution: The companys databases underpin a number of core business

processes from procurement to sales and distribution. To optimize the

databases used by its North American divisions, Unilever deployed a CA Database

Management solution that simplifies routine administration tasks and minimizes

downtime.
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Result: By increasing database performance and utilization, Unilevers North

American divisions have been able to reduce operating costs and improve

efficiency thereby helping to ensure supply chain continuity and quality

manufacturing processes.

An integration of SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems will bring

considerable financial benefits for one world-renowned company, it has been

suggested. Writing for Computerworld UK, Leo King noted Unilever - which makes

products such as Dove soap - is facing a large SAP integration after buying

TRESemme shampoo maker Alberto Culver.

The firm is standardising globally on its SAP ERP software and Alberto Culver

began a similar SAP rollout two years ago. It claimed the acquisition will result in

significant operational savings and help make the organisation the world's second

largest shampoo manufacturer. Of its SAP implementation, the firm said its

operational execution had been significantly improved and its process complexity

dramatically cut. Western Europe has proven the most effective cost-cutting

ground as a result, it added. SAP recently announced it will speed up its ERP

implementations after it developed Rapid Development software to help

businesses set up their systems in as little as 12 weeks.

Much of Unilevers monitoring and control of its business comes through the

companys SAP ERPplatform, which is now used globally. It is also in the midst of

creating a global supply chain function with standardised processes,

which relies on networks created and maintained by BT. These systems appear

set to be used widely as part of the sustainability efforts.

Unilever, working with consultancy Accenture as part of the One Unilever

efficiency overhaul, has been working on two major technology projects that will

likely play an integral part in the sustainability drive. It had not provided exact

detail at the time of writing.

Under the first of the two plans, called Sirius, it has deployed a harmonised

process model based around SAP ERP, SAP NetWeaver business intelligence. A

second project, called Mountain, has seen Unilever form a standardised supply
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chain model. It is expected to draw heavily on the business intelligence and ERP

systems to produce annual sustainability reports.

In an Accenture case study document, Unilevers supply chain company (USCC)

chairman Peter Ernsting, said that without the new platform, USCC technically

would not exist. The company now has a real time view of its supply chain,

which will be crucial in controlling emissions and processes. Other key

technology at Unilever includes Oracle databases and CA database management,

where all the data is stored.

Business SCM Process

Unilever uses ERP for a all its business activities. Here we will discuss on the

inputs, outputs, process, feedback of the entire supply chain management (SCM).

The Inputconstitutes of where the company decides to purchase the various raw

materials required for Manufacturing a economical price/unit not compromising

quality.

In Process, the data required by different departments for decision making is

sectioned and send selectively to the designated authorities where the data is

analyzed and decisions are taken, this is then made to an action plan in


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softwares to manage the different operations timely in different shifts by working

staff.

Output, The entire production is completed and is packed, this is all digitally

documented by inventory management. Which is then ready for sale and cleared

by the Quality Control Department. This containers of Product is then channelized

to various countries by the customer distribution centres through different modes

of transportation according to the suitability. and the ERP system automatically

stores all data of the stock in the Datawarehouse & the respective branches

confirm the delivery of the ordered containers of stocks by tallying the total value

of the stock send from the unit and stock received. This is then stored in the

Local warehouse of the company which is then supplied to the distributors which

spreads the various variants and products to the entire market from the retail

stores to modern trade.

# Unilevers products are generally sold through its sales force and through

independent brokers, agents and distributors to chain, wholesale, co-operative

and independent grocery accounts, food service distributors and institutions.

Products are distributed through distribution centres, satellite warehouses,

company operated and public storage facilities.

# Home and Personal Care in North America has also developed distribution

centres for third-party manufacturers where products are collected to create

heavier more efficient loads to resupply customer distribution centres.

# Home & Personal Care business in Europe (HPCE) selects hauliers on cost,

performance and environmental impact.

Feedback, Unilever tries to rectify learning from their previous experiences and

feedback to improve their efficiency.


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Discussed below are the various types of information systems used within the

business model

of the Unilever group with their specific usage:-

# R&D System (LIMS): Used for formula development

# Specifications Systems: Used for Packaging, Raw Material, Formula, Master

BOM, Finished Products and Process Specifications

# Manufacturing Planning Systems: Used for MRP, Production Orders, Purchase

Orders, Standard Costs, RM/Pack/WIP Inventory, Financial Transactions, Material

Masters and Production Reporting

# Planning Systems: Used for Demand Planning (DP), Demand Req Planning (DRP),

Constrained Prod Planning (CPP), VMI and Finite Scheduling

# MFG Execution Systems (Various): Used for Finished Goods Production,

Compounding/Batching, Quality/Lab Systems and Plant Maintainance Systems

# Order to Cash Systems: Used for Order Entry/Management, Terms of Sale,

Deduction Tracking, Stock Allocation and Invoicing


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# Finished Goods Management Systems: Used for Shipping, FG Warehouse,

Transportation, Finished Goods Production (PIN) and Traceability

Supply Chain Strategies of Unilever N.V

Unilevers logistics operations present perhaps the biggest opportunity to

streamline its supply chain and boost the companys ability to achieve its lofty

growth goals. The company is in the process of consolidating its nearly 30

warehouses down to five massive distribution centres capable of shipping

customer orders within a days time.

Much of that consolidation is a recognition that retailers are adopting zero-

inventory policies, which require an optimal use of flow-through and cross

docking in the warehouses. To increase asset utilization, lower inventories and

improve service, Unilever adopted collaborative planning, forecasting and

replenishment (CPFR) relationships with some retail customers.

Post Implementing Management Information System (MIS) in UNILEVER

To meet customer demand - 150 million times a day, the company must ensure a

constant supply of its merchandise to retail outlets around the globe. In addition

to ensuring efficient distribution, Unilever must also maintain excellent product

quality standards.

The companys databases underpin a number of core business processes - from

procurement to sales and distribution. To optimize the databases used Unilever

deployed a CA Database Management solution that simplifies routine

administration tasks and minimizes downtime. By increasing database

performance and utilization, Unilever have been able to reduce operating costs

and improve efficiency thereby ensure supply chain continuity and quality

manufacturing processes.

Maintaining a seamless supply chain and product quality

With such a vast product portfolio, Unilever Best foods and Unilever HPC have a

highly complex supply chain and production line.


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To manage day-to-day activities, they depend on an extensive enterprise resource

planning (ERP) system, which is supported by a number of extremely large

databases. The ERP system supports a range of core business processes, such as

sales, distribution, procurement and finance. Unilever Best foods uses

approximately 500 gigabytes of disk space in its production environment, while

the HPC division uses another 150 gigabytes. Both divisions also keep up to seven

copies of this data for development and testing. This means Unilevers database

administrators are locked in a constant balancing act to ensure the optimum

performance of the ERP applications, while at the same time control the growth

of the companys databases.

Getting to grips with data

To increase efficiency of data management across the business, Unilever

deployed a CA Database Management solution to enable it to simplify routine

administration tasks as well as increase application availability.

Co-developing an industrialized implementation approach with the Unilever

program management, the team successfully deployed the integrated solution to

Unilevers marketing and sales organizations and 62 factories across 24 European

countries. In total, approximately 17,000 users now have access to and use the

SAP solution.

SAP ERP

The SAP ERP application supports the essential functions of your business

processes and operations efficiently and are tailored to specific needs of your

industry.

SAP ERP, an application included in SAP Business Suite software, delivers these

solutions:

SAP ERP Financials SAP ERP Human Capital Management SAP ERP Operations


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SAP ERP Corporate ServicesFor current customers, SAP enhancement packagesoffers the benefit of

improving and extending your SAP ERP software without the cost of major

upgrades. For example, you can leverage SAP Master Data Governance delivered

via an SAP enhancement package to help govern financial master data used in

consolidation and operational chart of accounts. Tap into the interactive SAP ERP

Community to keep up with the latest SAP ERP enhancements.

SAP NETWEAVER

SAP NetWeaver provides the technical foundation for SAP applications. It delivers

a portfolio of enterprise technology that allows you to extend your applications to

reach more people and to adopt new processes, devices, and consumption

models. SAP NetWeaver helps you improve team productivity and business

integration, enables you to simplify and manage your IT environment, and reduces

operational costs so that IT resources are free to focus on business innovation.

With the SAP NetWeaver technology platform, you can perform activities in the

following areas:

Team Productivity

SAP NetWeaver supports a variety of user interfaces and collaboration tools. You

can accommodate different work styles and roles for best user experience with:

SAP NetWeaver Portalto provide role-based views that span yourenterprise, enabling everyone to take full advantage of information

resources

SAP NetWeaver Gatewayto enable developers to create innovative, people-centric applications that link business users to SAP software

SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Searchto provide a simple and secure gatewayto enterprise information and processes.

Information Management
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With SAP NetWeaver you can accelerate access to business information to

improve decision making. You can deliver business information to the right

people at the right time with:

SAP NetWeaver Master Data Managementto support customer dataintegration, global spend analysis, global data synchronization, product

content management, mergers, and acquisitions

SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouseto enable a scalable enterprise datawarehouse

SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Acceleratorto accelerate the resultsof queries or searches while lowering the cost of operations, even as data

volumes and number of users increase

SAP Information Lifecycle Managementto manage access, storage, andretention of data from legacy SAP systems, while complying with legal and

regulatory mandates

Business Process Management

With SAP NetWeaver, you can create and adapt business processes and

business rules for higher levels of flexibility while reducing risks and costs.

As an integral part of the SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment, these

business process management offerings enable a coherent development

experience:

SAP NetWeaver Business Process Managementto model and executeprocesses in order to achieve enhanced responsiveness to changing

business needs and reduce cost of handling exceptions

SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Managementto create and maintainbusiness rules to ensure that processes conform to business policies

Composition
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With SAP NetWeaver, you can use a model-driven composition environment to

develop or update applications that support flexible business processes. You

can also use SAP NetWeaver to monitor and manage business processes to

improve process quality and efficiency.

Compose or update applications to support flexible business processes with:

SAP NetWeaver Composition Environmentto design, deploy, and runapplications

SAP NetWeaver Developer Studioto develop J2EE-based, multi-tieredbusiness applications

SAP NetWeaver Visual Composerto compose model-based businessapplications without manual coding

SOA Middleware

With SAP NetWeaver, your IT organization can make disparate applications and

systems work together consistently to enable end-to-end business processes

exchanging information and executing transactions smoothly, and operating as

if they were a single system.

Integrate and manage business processes that are enabled by SAP and non-SAP

applications with:

SAP NetWeaver Process Integrationto connect applications and datasources to integrate processes

Foundation Management

With SAP NetWeaver, you can improve the operational efficiency of best-in-class

business processes. In particular, you can use SAP NetWeaver to run

applications, such as the SAP Business Suite family of business applications and

SAP-certified partner solutions, from a unified platform ensuring that mission-
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critical business processes are highly available, reliable, scalable, and secure

throughout the life cycle.

Run critical business applications on a stable technical foundation with:

SAP NetWeaver Application Serverto deploy core business applications usingthe open and reliable infrastructure

SAP NetWeaver Identity Managementto manage user identity and accessacross the enterprise

SAP Solution Managerto ensure that mission-critical business processes arehighly available, scalable, and secure throughout their life cycle.

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