Client background

Client: Multinational automotive corporation based in Europe

Industry: Automotive

Products/Services: Automobiles

Areas of operations: Worldwide

Challenges

The client’s business data was stored in multiple ERP systems, legacy COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) PLM (product lifecycle management) systems and IoT systems, which were spread across different geographies.

The client was not able to integrate data from different source systems to provide real time data to business users. Huge manual efforts were required to get the data. The business teams had to wait for one business day to work on these data and perform reliability analysis or prepare machine fact sheets (codes to know if any machine part is working/alive).

Business users needed consolidated data from various ERP instances to enable supplier and CRM (Customer relationship management) analytics.

Solution

Wipro implemented a data virtualization solution integrating complex legacy COTS PLM systems, ERP Systems, IoT and analytics data sources to enable various supplier and CRM analytics use cases for the client.

Solution highlights:

• Implemented 3-tier architecture including a physical layer of source systems, a logical layer for integrated view of data, and a consumption layer to provide data to specific business groups within the organization
• Implemented a data virtualization solution to provide end users with direct access to the data with no intervention of IT staff
• Enabled real time access to transactional data, such that it is available for further analytics as and when it is available in source systems
• Rolled out various supplier and CRM analytics use cases such as reliability analysis, conditional monitoring and next best offer
• Increased data visibility to user community including marketing, finance, legal and other business groups

Business impact

Implementation of the data virtualization solution reduced the data-access time from 24 hours to a minute. The solution further led to these benefits for the client:

• Reduction in dependency on IT teams to serve data to the consumption layer. This resulted in 4 to 5 FTE savings per month
• 40 percent cost saving while performing reliability analysis and conditional monitoring. These savings were realized by reducing the human resources employed to perform the data query, as business users now had direct access to data
• Big cut in IT costs as business users were empowered with self-service capabilities through web user interface
• 40 percent decrease in query execution time due to implementation of various data optimization techniques
  

This was a large data virtualization implementation on AWS cloud in terms of scale and size. Business users were empowered with real time data from heterogeneous sources and enabled with self-service capabilities, which reduced IT costs significantly.

- Raman Awal, Global Practice Head - Information Management, Data Analytics & AI, Wipro Limited.