Flexible analysis and reporting with DeltaMaster in strategic corporate purchasing at Voith

The technology group Voith uses Delta- Master in strategic corporate purchasing to analyze expenses and procurement  activities and for reporting. The solution is designed for use worldwide and also takes local circumstances into account.

“From the Group’s perspective, management of purchasing at Voith requires reliable complexity management and considerable flexibility. A variety of business areas, structures, processes, markets, and challenges within Purchasing requires flexible analyses and reports,” explains Matthias Krebs, Head of Purchasing and Supply Chain Analytics at Voith. “Here in the business department, we wanted a solution that lets us identify deviations in the right context immediately and get to the bottom of them. Furthermore, it is essential to prepare ad hoc analyses flexibly across the board from various data sources such as SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics NAV.”

“The functions of DeltaMaster significantly increase our scope for action in the context of analytics and reporting,” adds Patrick Temeschinko, Head of Purchasing Strategies and Methods at Voith GmbH & Co. KGaA. The DeltaMaster business intelligence suite was recommended to Voith as a
benchmark – both by Voith’s employees and by its IT partner Orpheus, a specialist in procurement intelligence solutions for strategic purchasing. After assessing further tools from the field of BI, Voith took up the recommendation. “Individually and compared with other products, DeltaMaster proved to be the solution that copes best with the great complexity of our corporate purchasing in terms of analysis flexibility, analysis speed, and clear visualization,” states Krebs.

For Voith, the main added value of DeltaMaster is its flexibility, as Temeschinko explains. “We have gained flexibility in two areas: at the back end with raw data, where we can quickly make adjustments and filter topics with Orpheus and its CMS capabilities. And we have a highly flexible front end in the form of DeltaMaster – with regard to the type of analysis and target group-oriented visualization of results.”

“DeltaMaster’s virtual hierarchies are a huge gain for us analysis experts in Controlling. We are a very complex Group as far as the structures ‘behind the scenes’ are concerned,” says Krebs. “With DeltaMaster, we can also map the structures that do not follow the business units. For example, if we need to find out what the overall picture would look like without a specific division, we can build up a complete report structure for this with just a few actions.”

According to Krebs, it is also easily possible to map a new division: “A new division called Digital Solutions has been established at Voith. At present, we are mapping the purchasing for it without tying up internal IT resources – simply with the tools of DeltaMaster. We can prepare everything in such a way that we have an overview of what we are doing in the division – and we have the flexibility to intervene actively there.”

DeltaMaster is also flexible in terms of new analyses. For instance, Voith needed just one week to implement the lead-time calculation without IT support or external support for analysis of its suppliers’ adherence to deadlines based on data from various Microsoft Dynamics NAV systems.

End users with no expert analytical knowledge chiefly benefit from the clear and flexible visualization of information through various functions. One example is the standard reporting of the Global Business Service organizational unit (GBS). Standardizable administrative tasks, including the purchasing of non-production materials, are bundled in the four regional GBS centers.

Reporting enables purchasers to assess the data relevant to their service center from various perspectives: on the basis of material groups, plants supported by GBS, or purchasing teams within GBS. Via the analysis functions contained in DeltaMaster, users can access developments over time and detailed information on every available KPI in a targeted way.

• High level of complexity: four divisions, 60 purchasing units, 1,200 material groups, 30,000 suppliers, 420,000 orders, 695,000 invoices
• High response speed through efficient reporting in combination with flexible detailed analyses
• Virtual hierarchies, in addition to database structures
• Variable levels of analysis detail, from “helicopter view” to document level

• Global technology group with headquarters in Heidenheim, Germany
• Markets: Energy, oil and gas, paper, commodities, transport and automotive
• Around 19,000 employees
• A presence in more than 60 countries