The original deal and its upgrade were provided by Comparex Africa COA, a Cognos Premier business partner. As a consequence, Shatterprufe expects enhanced user buy-in, easy access to corporate information nationwide, and the ability to provide select management with key performance indicators for the business via Web browsers.

The implementation of the Cognos 7 business intelligence solution is in line with Shatterprufe's stated objective to manage product and market profitability.

Shatterprufe, a company in the PG group, focuses its attention on the OEM (original equipment manufacture), replacement and export markets. It manufactures more than 4m units of safety glass a year, and its product range covers 700 windscreen shapes and 2 000 toughened parts, some for cars over two decades old. It stores over 5 000 moulds for various shapes of automotive glass at its various plants. It has manufacturing plants and nine sales centres situated across southern Africa.

"With this level of complexity and decentralisation in Shatterprufe, we needed a unified reporting solution," says Cedric Parker, project manager for Shatterprufe. "We have been running on Baan for the last five years, but, like most ERP systems, it makes it difficult to gain deep insights into the business. For that reason, we embarked on a phased business intelligence project in August 2000."

Shatterprufe had a number of reporting systems drawing data from Baan's Oracle database, including Baan Reports, Microsoft Excel and Cognos Impromptu. It chose to consolidate them all with a total business intelligence solution, including intranet-based delivery with Cognos PowerPlay Web. The number of named users has climbed from an initial 25 to 50, covering all levels of management across the region.

Now, with user buy-in growing daily, the company has chosen to upgrade to Series 7 and the KPI Business Pack, becoming the first company in southern Africa to do so. Key factors in this decision were an improved, more intuitive user interface with enhanced ease of use and more rapid response times across the wide-area network. "This was important given our widely distributed network and its bandwidth constraints," says Parker.

Cognos's KPI Business Pack will provide a highly visual digital dashboard allowing management to see, on a daily basis, key indicator performance by actual against target, with easy access to underlying data. This will be delivered to the people who actually need it and can act on the knowledge. Comparex Africa COA provides first-line technical support on a contracted basis through its Port Elizabeth office.

"Proactive information delivery is a competitive non-negotiable for companies with complex organisational structures and reporting requirements," says Rodney Hood, managing executive at Comparex Africa COA. "Shatterprufe has shown great vision in leading the way with Cognos's new products, vision which should translate to increased bottom-line profitability and market share."