The IT hosting provider 'Servimática' needed to update its business continuity and recovery solution to meet the level of resiliency expected by its clients and recent government regulations to comply with the Basel II Accord. The compamy Engaged IBM Global Technology Services and IBM Business Partner Open Norte to deploy a new BCRS solution.

1. IBM Software Chemicals & Petroleum
Business Analytics
CHT/BEZEMA realigns
worldwide group reporting
and consolidation with
IBM Cognos TM1
CHT R. Beitlich GmbH (CHT) in Tübingen is the headquarters of
a worldwide operating group of specialist chemicals companies. The
Overview
group’s products improve the quality, functionality and performance
Business challenge of textiles, building materials, paper and pet food, as well as cleaning
CHT/BEZEMA needed a new solution for and care products for the consumer goods industry. CHT/BEZEMA
reporting, planning and consolidation of
its 22 worldwide companies.
has production and sales locations all over the world, operated by
more than 20 affiliates. In 2010, it achieved a group turnover of
Solution over €300 million and employed approximately 1,600 people. CHT
IBM® Cognos® TM1® enables uniform
exports approximately 80 percent of its products from Germany to 120
sales reporting, exact planning and in
collaboration with elKomKons™ financial countries all over the world.
consolidation for the CHT/BEZEMA
group.
Conventional spreadsheet solutions fail to meet
demands
CHT faced the challenge of introducing a uniform sales reporting
solution for 22 group companies that would provide a basis for group
consolidation as well as for annual sales planning.
Historically, each CHT/BEZEMA company used its own ERP system.
Recently, the ERP landscape has been rationalised to some extent: in
Germany and Switzerland, CHT uses SAP ERP 6.0, and five other
subsidiaries use SAP Business One. However, in the medium term,
there will still be a huge number of different ERP systems in the
CHT/BEZEMA group.
The use of different ERP systems meant that there were no uniform
reporting processes or consistent data. Planning and financial
consolidation were very laborious processes. The challenge was to
bring together heterogeneous information from the different ERP
systems of 22 CHT/BEZEMA companies and transform it into an
analysable dataset.
Martin Schmälzle, Head of IT at CHT, explains the reasons for the
decision to introduce a new solution: “The present solution on the basis
of Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheets did not fulfil CHT’s high standards
for flexibility. Moreover, it regularly required a lot of manual effort, and
it took a long time before the desired results were available.”

2. IBM Software Chemicals & Petroleum
Business Analytics
sales reporting, and the sales departments of all connected
companies can access reports and analyses via a simple web
Business Benefits
interface. Once a year, CHT carries out a sales planning
• At the touch of a button, sales and financial departments receive exact exercise for its companies up to customer level and article
financial figures for all CHT/BEZEMA companies. level, which currently takes place in a combined solution
• Sales planning and group consolidation have become considerably based on IBM Lotus® Notes® and IBM Cognos TM1. In
quicker and easier. future, IBM Cognos TM1 will take over this job completely.
• IBM Cognos TM1 delivers high performance, even with huge data
volumes. Another area where IBM Cognos TM1 supports the business
is the extensive monthly business reporting for the whole
• CHT/BEZEMA is well prepared for future challenges. CHT/BEZEMA group. Via TM1’s Excel interface, all the
relevant data from CHT/BEZEMA companies is collected,
imported, validated and – again – published using the Web
front-end.
At group headquarters, CHT/BEZEMA had been using a
TM1-based in-memory OLAP solution for about twelve
The CHT/BEZEMA group also uses IBM Cognos TM1 to
years. On account of the company’s good experience with the
create its annual consolidated financial statement. Once the
comprehensive functionality and high performance of this
data has been imported, the solution performs the calculations
memory-based solution, CHT decided to use IBM Cognos
required to generate the profit and loss statement, the balance
TM1 for the new project. To gain additional performance,
sheet and the cash flow.
a conversion from 32- to 64-bit technology was planned
at the same time. CHT tasked elKomSolutions GmbH,
Finally, CHT/BEZEMA also produces the complete legal
an IBM Business Partner from Tuttlingen, with this job.
consolidated financial statement using elKomKons™ from
elKomSolutions’ TM1-based group consolidation solution
elKomSolutions, a flexible consolidation solution.
had already been in use at CHT for many years, and the
company had also been CHT’s software service partner for a CHT has been using a Cubeware™ application as the ETL
long time. (extract, transform and load) tool that imports data from
different sources into the TM1 structure. However, thanks
The focus of elKomSolutions’ service offerings lies in the
to IBM Cognos TM1 TurboIntegrator’s capabilities for
development, implementation and maintenance of software
extracting large quantities of data from different sources and
solutions in the field of business intelligence, corporate
importing it into TM1, CHT has decided to partially replace
planning and group consolidation. Founded in 1997, today
the present ETL tool.
elKomSolutions serves more than 150 enterprises, from
medium-sized businesses up to the top performers on the With the previous solution, for example, the import of a large
German Stock Exchange (DAX 100). data set from an IBM i server took more than three hours;
now, with IBM Cognos TM1 TurboIntegrator, it can be
A uniform solution for sales reporting, completed in a few minutes – approximately 50 times faster
planning and group consolidation than before.
IBM Cognos TM1 now forms the core of a group-wide
solution for all CHT companies. Every company sends Overall, approximately 300 users worldwide access IBM
its accumulated monthly sales data to the headquarters Cognos TM1, mostly via a Web frontend. The users are
in an extensive transfer file. This file contains all relevant predominantly from the sales, marketing and controlling
information, such as for example article numbers, amounts, departments, but the development and support department
turnovers and costs. After validation and inter-company also uses the TM1 data to support technical customer service.
turnover elimination, all the data flows into different TM1
OLAP data bases. The resulting data cubes contain both Advantages of a homogeneous system
source information and consolidated values, according to the landscape
purpose of their use. For many years, CHT has been a loyal user of IBM hardware,
solely using IBM systems in its central IT department. The
Based on this data, the group-wide contribution accounting is company’s central SAP ERP applications run in an IBM i
processed. The TM1 database provides the basis for central

3. IBM Software Chemicals & Petroleum
Business Analytics
Thanks to the long experience CHT has already gained with
TM1, its own employees are able to operate the solution
“Finally, we can provide clean financial independently, without external support. When a new tool
figures for all CHT/BEZEMA companies or functionality needs to be introduced, consultants from
to our worldwide sales organisation at the elKomSolutions provide support and training for CHT staff.
touch of a button. Sales planning and group Schmälzle reports about many advantages of his new IBM
consolidation have also become considerably Cognos TM1 solution: “Finally, we can provide clean
quicker and more exact. TM1 is very easy to financial figures for all CHT/BEZEMA companies to
our worldwide sales organisation at the touch of a button.
use and tremendously adaptable.” Sales planning and group consolidation have also become
considerably quicker and more exact. TM1 is very easy to
— Martin Schmälzle, Head of IT, CHT R. Beitlich GmbH use and tremendously adaptable. New cubes can be created
quickly,which is very advantageous for the development
and testing of prototypes and provides short project cycles.
Solution Components The Excel interface in particular helps many users from the
controlling department work very easily with the central
Software system in their usual environment, and enables us to eliminate
• IBM® Cognos® TM1®
• IBM Cognos TM1 TurboIntegrator
many isolated Excel files.”
• elKomKons
The performance of the solution also fulfils Schmälzle’s
Servers
expectations: “The biggest TM1 cube contains about 800 MB.
• IBM Power Systems™ 520 running IBM i
• IBM System x3650 M3 Six to eight million relational records lie in the background.
In spite of these huge data volumes, the high performance has
IBM Business Partner
completely persuaded us of the value of IBM Cognos TM1.”
• elKomSolutions GmbH
Prepared for future projects
Within the scope of a project that was started in 2011, CHT
environment on two IBM Power Systems 520 servers with begun to use IBM Cognos TM1 to handle reporting for the
mirrored data; IBM Backup Recovery and Media Services central SAP ERP system in Germany. With IBM Cognos
(BRMS) and an IBM Tape Library TS3200 provide data TM1, it is possible to process the multidimensional data
protection. from the SAP ERP system directly. This enables the CHT
to provide daily sales statistics to all companies who are
Furthermore, IBM System x3650 M3 and IBM System registered in the central SAP system at the click of a mouse.
Storage DS3400 disk systems support VMware environments.
IBM Content Manager manages the archiving of SAP data Schmälzle is sure that TM1 is the right solution, and has
and scanned documents, and will soon be used for IBM great potential for the future: “Our future plans are to extend
Lotus Notes emails too. IBM Cognos TM1 runs in a logical the IBM Cognos TM1 reporting capabilities in conjunction
partition on these servers. with the SAP ERP system. Future projects are, for example,
the refinement of the sales reporting, the introduction of
IBM Tivoli® Storage Manager is used to back up the System purchasing reporting, cost-centre and cost -type accounting,
x servers on connected IBM System Storage TS3310 tape as well as production reporting. With its innovative
systems. technology, excellent flexibility and high performance, IBM
Cognos TM1 provides the best conditions to fulfil our
Managing the solution expectations in the future.”
The functional management of the IBM Cognos TM1
solution is the responsibility of the controlling department,
because reports and analyses of the commercial figures are
mainly required here. The IT department acts as an internal
service provider, and looks after the supply of data.

4. About IBM Business Analytics
IBM Business Analytics software delivers actionable insights
decision-makers need to achieve better business performance.
IBM offers a comprehensive, unified portfolio of business
intelligence, predictive and advanced analytics, financial
performance and strategy management, governance, risk and © Copyright IBM Corporation 2011
compliance and analytic applications. IBM Deutschland GmbH
71137 Ehningen
Deutschland
With IBM software, companies can spot trends, patterns and
ibm.com/de
anomalies, compare “what if” scenarios, predict potential
IBM Österreich
threats and opportunities, identify and manage key business
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risks and plan, budget and forecast resources. With these 1020 Wien
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better understand, anticipate and shape business outcomes. IBM Schweiz
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About elKomSolutions GmbH ibm.com/ch
IBM Advanced Business Partner elKomSolutions GmbH
is an established service provider focused on development, Produced in Germany
July 2011
implementation and maintenance of software solutions in the All Rights Reserved
field of business intelligence, corporate planning and group
IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Cognos, and TM1 are trademarks of
consolidation. International Business Machines Corporation, registered in many
jurisdictions worldwide. A current list of other IBM trademarks is available
elKomSolutions develops integrated software solutions based on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at http://www.ibm.
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on robust IBM Cognos TM1 technology. The modular
system architecture allows elKomSolutions to develop Other company, product or service names may be trademarks, or service
marks of others.
perfectly tailored and easily extensible solutions for its
customers with a user-friendly and consistent user interface. IBM and elKomSolutions GmbH are separate companies and each is
responsible for its own products. Neither IBM nor elKomSolutions
GmbH makes any warranties, express or implied, concerning the other’s
To learn more about products, services and solutions from products.
elKomSolutions, visit: elkomsolutions.de
References in this publication to IBM products, programs or services
do not imply that IBM intends to make these available in all countries
in which IBM operates. Any reference to an IBM product, program or
service is not intended to imply that only IBM’s product, program or
service may be used. Any functionally equivalent product, program or
service may be used instead.
All customer examples cited represent how some customers have used IBM
For more information products and the results they may have achieved. Actual environmental
For further information or to reach a representative please costs and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual
visit ibm.com/analytics. customer configurations and conditions.
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Request a call used parts. In some cases, the hardware product may not be new and may
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