"Monarch Data Pump has enabled us to rapidly develop and deploy a comprehensive enterprise dashboard system for our North America manufacturing sites... (with) no need for new database programming, expensive business intelligence or data management solutions, or end user training."

Esselte is a leading global manufacturer of office supplies, selling over 30,000 different innovative office products in over 120 countries worldwide. Esselte Americas has used Monarch for years to easily transform existing manufacturing and accounting data into actionable information without significant programming. "Instead of printing reports, our knowledge workers save them as print files, open them using Monarch software, and easily review, analyze and export the data to MS Excel at any time," says Michael Spielman, Manager of Systems Development for Esselte Americas. "We estimate Esselte has already saved about $45,000 in annual report printing costs alone!"

The company recently greatly expanded its use and scope of Monarch Report Mining technology across the entire organization through the implementation of Monarch Data Pump, Datawatch Corporation's Windows server-based report/data mining and information delivery solution. "Monarch Data Pump has enabled us to rapidly develop and deploy a comprehensive enterprise dashboard system for our North America manufacturing sites," says Luis Becerril, Director of Pull Inventory, North America.

"Even better, by implementing Monarch Data Pump, there was no need for new database programming, no need for expensive, new business intelligence or data management systems, and no need for end user training."

A PROGRAMMING–FREE INFORMATION DELIVERY SOLUTION

Esselte's goal was clear: very quickly produce comprehensive, automatically delivered reporting for executives, directors and managers located at the company's manufacturing sites across North America, to facilitate effective management of the company's just-in-time "pull inventory" system. "Clearly, the better we can manage our pull inventory system, the better we can achieve 100% on-time filled orders and the highest level of customer satisfaction," says Luis. "The overall solution we created provides the interactive data and graphical views needed for proactive inventory management."

Esselte's success in completing its project without a long-winded and expensive implementation process can be attributed to two decisions: developing the dashboards using MS Excel, and selecting Monarch Data Pump for programming-free data acquisition and automated information delivery.

"Excel already exists on our desktops, and is actively used throughout the company," says Michael. "We knew our senior executives would use an Excel-based solution without hesitation and without the need for training of any kind. It made perfect sense to leverage Excel as our presentation tool."

As for the data needed to populate this MS Excel solution, "we use a legacy mainframe ERP system, which processes our business transactions very reliably, but getting data out of the system for analysis is difficult," Michael adds. "There were no shortage of possible solutions which would have required us to replace existing hardware and existing information assets, and create and maintain brand new solutions, but we definitely did not want to do that. Thanks to our experience and success with Monarch on the desktop, we knew Monarch Data Pump could easily acquire and deliver the enterprise data we needed.

Monarch Data Pump resides on a Windows server, automatically mining data from regularly-run inventory, order management and other reports, produced already by Esselte's ERP system. Monarch Data Pump also creates additional calculated fields; data filters and sorts based on manufacturing location, region and other predefined limits; as well as summary data views, with predefined data aggregations, subtotals and grand totals.

"Monarch Data Pump facilitates customization of the data based on recipients and groups of recipients," says Michael. "Monarch Data Pump then automatically performs hundreds of different data exports to Excel, populating our customized Excel dashboards with new data, for automated email delivery."

AN IMMEDIATE BUSINESS IMPACT

The impact of Monarch Data Pump on Esselte America's operations has been dramatic. "Over 100 employees at all levels in the organization now routinely rely on the Excel-based reporting automatically updated with fresh data and delivered via email, using Monarch Data Pump," says Michael. "They are very happy with the information they are receiving. The data is timely, completely accurate, and presented in Excel which they are already familiar with. It's all possible, and surprisingly simple, thanks to Monarch Data Pump."

Esselte's Excel-based solution, populated with customized data from, and delivered by, Monarch Data Pump, includes a wide array of critical pull inventory system metrics, presented in interactive graphical formats. Michael says, "Our executives and managers can work with different views of current month production versus historical periods; daily inventory activity for the last 30 days; trending analysis of customer orders; color-coded views of on-time order levels and backorder levels by distribution center, and much, much more."

"We even offer an order simulation tool," Luis adds. "We automatically extract data from order reports with Monarch Data Pump, to derive order quantities by SKU, by distribution center, etc., along with specialized calculations which enable us to simulate the inventory levels that must be maintained to accommodate anticipated levels of orders.

"Monarch Data Pump has brought our use of enterprise data to a whole new level. The solution we created is facilitating proactive inventory management decisions that are helping us run much leaner than before, helping avoid excess inventory and avoiding waste of working capital."

AN UNBEATABLE COST–BENEFIT SCENARIO

Esselte first identified first the information needed to successfully manage its inventory; and then identified existing enterprise information sources, in which all needed data already existed within existing ERP report output. Monarch Data Pump unlocked the data buried within Esselte's existing reports into customized, actionable data using Esselte-designed Excel templates, fully achieving its goals and objectives, at a small fraction of the cost and complexity of other solutions.

"Monarch Data Pump is helping us achieve more efficient inventory management, and better on-time order rates," says Luis. "All this was realized with no new programming of any kind to our databases or our core ERP application, while also avoiding the need for any new business intelligence solutions. The business benefits across our organization from our investment in Monarch Data Pump have been truly amazing."

Monarch Data Pump Powers Esselte America's Dashboards – Without Programming (PDF)