Also Featured:
HALO
EFFECT
How to know you’re
in compliance
- pg.3
Using What-If planners
to assess risk
- pg.8
Featured in this issue:
LOOK INSIDE
A WELL-OILED
S&OP
MACHINE
Written By:
Keith Peterson Ph.D.
CEO - Halo
Q1 2015 Volume 3 Issue 1
Message from the CEO
Keith Peterson Ph.D.
Welcome to the Q1 2015 Halo Effect. We are excited to announce a new versioning approach, Halo 15.1.
We have moved away from naming product components (Halo Source and Prism) to emphasize our focus
on creating a wholly-integrated platform for information management, data visualization – and now
predictive analytics.
I am also personally pleased to introduce you to several new team members who have joined to
support our continued growth. They are: Brenda Bradley, Office Management; Tyler Trainor, Finance;
John Siegman, VP of Sales and Marketing, Gene Johnson, Regional Manager – West, Lee Fritz, Regional
Manager – East. We have condensed the format of our newsletter to make it more readable. Please let
us know if you like it!
From Amanda Smith, Halo Product Leader:
Halo 2015.1 Release!
The Halo 15.1 release will be one of our best yet.
We are introducing enterprise wide capabilities
for Data Warehousing and Supply Chain Analytics. Halo is moving
to a two product release cycle per year so look forward to some
great things coming from Halo in 2015! Key features of this release
include Halo Scheduled Reporting, a re-designed pane editor with
additional functionality, new and enhanced KPI widgets and charts,
cube partitioning, index management, built-in cube browser and
a predictive framework. Additional license modules are also now
available for Budget Editing, Predictive Forecasts and
What If Analysis.
From Joseph Tan, Halo SaaS Product Leader:
Introducing Halo Cloud!
Halo Cloud Apps is a key plank in our SaaS strategy
to deliver ready-built Operational Analytics to
customers who want more out of their supply chain.
Cloud Apps
2
Halo Scheduled Reporting is a new feature that provides the
capability to distribute reports built in Halo Prism to internal or
external parties on a scheduled basis. This capability is extremely
simple to set up and configure, however, it also has powerful data
security mechanisms to ensure that the appropriate data is sent to
the correct parties. Now it is possible to publish information to those
who need it on a scheduled basis directly to their inbox. Halo users
can easily link back to Halo from these reports to go into further
details for a seamless user experience.
The Halo 15.1 release is available starting Q2 2015.
•
Platform-as-a-Service - Azure-certified server instances that
customers can stand up in the cloud within minutes to achieve
enterprise-level Data Warehouse and Analytics capability;
•
Software-as-a-Service options for new and existing customers
where the traditional CAPEX-heavy investment in software and
infrastructure is swapped for an OPEX-based model of monthly
or quarterly payments (minus the IT headaches)
•
Cloud Applications hosted by Halo that can transform and
analyze on-premise data to help customers address challenges
in the supply chain, in the areas of Sales and
Operations Planning
•
Reporting-as-a-Service – a hosted, automated reporting
solution that guarantees timely reports without the
usual hassle
To develop these offerings, Halo continues to partner closely with
Microsoft through the Vertical ISV Partnership Program and Microsoft
Partner Network – look out for Halo’s upcoming products in the
Azure Marketplace and Azure Pinpoint.
How to Know
You’re in
Compliance
and
Maximizing the Value
of your
Software Investment
O
ne of our customers, a global
semiconductor company that
designs and markets wireless
telecommunications products and services,
came to us with a unique problem. Like
many companies, they have an expansive
and expensive software portfolio. Their
Engineering Group provides support for
all of their Electrical Engineers in their
worldwide offices. The company has over
100 unique applications under license from
over 50 different vendors and spends over
$30 million in software leases annually. Our
customer uses software from Flexera to help
track and maintain these licenses. Their
problem was that with over 1,200 attributes
and over 130 unique applications, it was
becoming very difficult to determine if
software licenses were being complied with.
Compliance costs can be very high in the
software arena.
In addition, our customer had the desire
to maximize utilization of their licensed
software – expensive software left underutilized represents opportunity cost.
Conversely holding too few licenses could
put large scale chip design projects at risk.
Most engineering software vendors offer
a “remix” option, where a licensee can
change their mix of licensees at scheduled
times as long as they do not exceed their
total contract value. Our customer has
traditionally done this manually, relying
on the expertise of its staff, a very time
consuming and expensive proposition. They
wanted to implement an automated remix
approach using mathematical optimization to
generate more standardized decision making.
Our customer implemented Halo’s Software
Management Package to complement its
Flexera installation. Doing so allowed for
better forecasting, trending and use of
existing software licenses. Our technology
allowed them to improve their monthly
business unit statistics, speed the monthly
remix process and improve on their annual
budgeting process. Implementing Halo’s
technology is saving our customer over
$1.1 million annually just in intercompany
transfers on software license costs. Our
customer did not want to share the
estimated savings on avoiding IP compliance
charges from their software vendors. Based
on the intercompany savings alone, their
expected annual savings are over $1.1 million
gave them a simple payback period of a very
short time.
Software compliance is a subject no one
really wants to talk about but it is very
important to both the software licensee and
the software licensor. Avoiding compliance
costs while maximizing the value of the
licensed software is something every
company should be striving towards.
Key concepts: compliance, remix, optimization, ROI
Click here to
Learn More
3
LOOK INSIDE
S&OP
MACHINE
A WELL-OILED
How to create a Sales and Operations Planning framework for your business
W
e recently visited a $400M industrial supply company,
based in the Midwest. They told us that, while they
had a sales and operations planning process (S&OP),
they were not getting the results they hoped for. Their intent
was to improve demand forecasting and reduce inventory in
their made-to-stock business.
What was holding them back?
4
The problem was not management buy-in or process – the team
had done their homework and prepared the organization for
those changes. The CEO and CFO were brought in. However, they
complained that the planning output was too infrequent and too
late. Why couldn’t the S&OP team deliver more current information
with a better view of what to expect in the next reporting period?
The problem was data. The team had over-looked the difficulties
of pulling data together from the various systems. Currently,
their answer was to pull it all together in Excel. As a result,
business analysts in the S&OP team were spending two weeks
pulling data from the demand planners and operations teams
and building the required dashboard views that included sales,
operations, and inventory views. Given the effort, supervisor S&OP
reviews were limited to once per month and executive briefings
held quarterly. This was not sufficient for a mid-size company
required to be responsive rapidly changing market requirements.
What are the options for our company? The answer is technology.
Instead of manual data pulls and Excel, they could choose a data
integration platform like Halo 15.1. Halo automates linkages to
CRM, ERP, production and other data sources required by S&OP.
Simply replacing their current process with a software solution
would save 10 of the 14 days of man power effort and, as a bonus,
reduce potential errors due to manual efforts. Second, they could
use a visualization and analytics tool – again like the one integrated
in Halo 15.1 – to create visually exciting and clear graphic reports to
present their results. Leveraging automated report scheduling and
exceptions rules alerts, the S&OP could reduce the rote information
reviews and spend their team analyzing new insight into their
performance and investigating root causes of performance variances.
Last, S&OP requires a robust demand forecasting process. Halo 15.1
provides a robust demand forecasting module that uses multiple
algorithms to find the best solution for the data. It also includes an
interactive “write back” capability that enables managers to edit the
forecast results to include special events like upcoming promotions
into the forecast. The result? Strong forecasts at any level from
product to category that are seamlessly integrated back into the
S&OP interface. Other clients suggest favorable results to this type of
packaged solution. This includes inventory reductions of 20% to 55%,
increased forecast accuracy, and very impressed senior management.
Looking to create a better S&OP process? Consider these criteria for
the technology side of your efforts:
1. Understand how you will aggregate sales, inventory and
operations data into a single database – this is difficult but
solvable with software. Heard that you can just dump all the
data in “as is” and cool new algorithms will automatically do
the work for you in minutes? Remember the adage that if
somethings sounds too good to be true…
2. Understand the information needs and preferences of each
audience. Generally, your staff will want detailed projections
in a tabular format. At the other end of the hall, executives
will want you to “helicopter up” to a summary view showing
them the impact of current operational dynamics on financial
results.
3. Develop action strategies based on the most common
patterns in your analytical reports. With predictive tools, it
is now possible to anticipate fast moving changes before they
become major trends – and react accordingly.
Sales and Operations Planning is based on the typical foundation of
people, process and technology. Thinking about your technology
solution, however, can save you people and process time – making
your S&OP initiative a roaring success from the board to staff levels.
Written By:
Keith Peterson Ph.D.
CEO - Halo
Key concepts: S&OP, demand, data linkage
5
Leading the way in waste management
Case at a glance
Business situation
Providing their clients with accessibility to key information is
a crucial service for EnviroWaste, made possible with Halo’s
newest breakthrough technology.
One step ahead
As one of New Zealand’s leading national
waste management companies, EnviroWaste
covers the full spectrum of services, from
waste collection, consolidation and disposal,
to the more technical areas of recycling and
dealing with contaminated soils. With 36
sites nationwide stretching from Auckland’s
North Shore to Dunedin, their clients range
from large, multi-branch corporations all
the way down to a single residence with an
EnviroWaste bin.
Increasingly what the larger companies
need, says EnviroWaste’s National Business
Development Manager, Antony Lee, is wellorganized information about what they’re
throwing away. These companies, says Lee,
are increasingly focused on reducing waste,
both for cost efficiency and to lessen their
impact on the environment. Halo Span
system facilitates this.
Self-service for clients
Halo Span is a new addition to the Halo
product range, and enables companies to
6
give their clients access to a dashboard
where they can view and analyze their
own data and generate timely, accurate
reports. In EnviroWaste’s case, the system
provides key clients access to a complete
and consolidated view of their own data to
accurately track the waste they generate,
and recovery statistics. They can view this in
a broad sense and then drill down for detail,
like how much waste each of their offices is
generating, how much of that is being sent
to landfill or recycled, and compare that
against previous quarters or years, or other
branches.
Lee says that this accessibility to
information is becoming crucial to their
larger corporate and government clients.
These large corporations have sustainability
requirements and in many cases a
nominated sustainability manager, whose
job it is to know what they’re disposing of,
where it’s going and how it’s being disposed
of. According to Lee, in the past, these
managers were relying on static reports that
very often raised as many questions as they
answered. “With the Halo Span system, we
can offer our clients direct access to this
»»
L arge and government clients
are increasingly demanding
better reporting
»»
15 days each month spent
generating and distributing
customer reports
»»
Dependency on static reports
often raises more questions and
creates more work
Benefits realized
»»
rovides a differentiated service
P
and competitive advantage
»»
Increased customer satisfaction
»»
educed effort spent on
R
customer reporting by 50%
»»
educed high cost methods
R
to a centralized and
automated process
Why Halo?
»»
orporate data remains securely
C
behind company firewall
»»
orks together with existing
W
BI technology
»»
S ecure access for external
users without requiring new
infrastructure or Active Directory
»»
roven track record of costP
effective implementation
information, with the ability to drill down
and ask and answer their own questions
without having to depend on IT.”
“Halo Span is also proving to be an effective sales tool for EnviroWaste. It gives us a competitive advantage. Our
biggest customers are looking for greater amounts of reporting, and Halo Span ticks the boxes – it’s about cost
savings and visibility of information.”
- Antony Lee, National Business Development Manager, EnviroWaste
Lee says giving his clients the ability to view standard reports and
easily create their own dynamic reports puts the power back in their
hands. “People in these organizations become more accountable,
rather than asking us ‘can you do this, can you do that’? It means
they can get right down into the information and identify areas for
improvement in their own organization. And then if they need to
make changes, having the numbers there in black and white means
it’ll be easier to get buy-in from their staff.”
Opening doors
According to Lee, Halo Span isn’t just a valuable resource for
EnviroWaste’s clients. It is also a baseline for companies to
understand where they ‘are at’ with regards to any sustainability
initiatives for their waste and recycling and what they want to
achieve going forward. “We’re all about providing tailor-made
solutions by identifying opportunities for diversion or recycling,
and having the flexibility to adapt to that market,” says Lee. “It’s
understanding our customer needs and looking beyond the system
of just collecting a bin to actually asking, what is the waste you’re
producing?
“We demonstrate this tool to potential clients as a point of
difference. The feedback we’ve had so far is that being able to offer
the kind of reporting you get with Halo Span is the key to opening
doors.”
And an integral part of that reporting, he says, is in the
simplicity, especially given the complexity of allowing external clients
access to internal systems and data. “We can do that with Halo Span
because the system authenticates our clients in the cloud, linking
them directly to the elements of our corporate data they have
access to. With anything like this, security is crucial and normally
you’d have to implement and manage a whole new security solution,
which is less than ideal. But this way, our data stays safely behind
our corporate firewall and as far as our client is concerned it will be
seamless and easy. And once the client’s into the data, the process
of arranging and analyzing it is simple.
“It’s so intuitive to use that you really only need to show
someone the basics and they’ll be able to navigate through their
data to pull up the reports that are really going to add to their work”.
This simplicity, says Lee, also extends to the implementation of the
Halo Span system itself. “Other tools take a long time to implement.
The team at Halo BI really understands our business needs – they
get it quickly, too. And it’s good value – you’re not paying an arm
and a leg.”
Click here to
Learn More
7
Budget and Planning:
Using What-If planners to assess risk
and better prepare your business
Are you actively developing and
using your financial data to improve
business performance? Halo’s new
Budget Editor Module provides
integrated Income Statement, Balance
Sheet, and Cash Flow reporting along
with powerful what-if capabilities.
Looking at the accompanying screen
shot, you can see that with Budget
Editor, you can simulate the impact
of key changes to your business
across products, time periods, and
geography. For example, suppose
you are hit with a 25% increase in
unbudgeted expense for the next
quarter. The built-in modeling
capability generates a revised forecast
with new confidence intervals. This
gives you the ability to better plan for
business changes and extraordinary
events and answer the what-if
questions before they happen.
We built Budget Editor because one of our manufacturing customers was having problems
understanding the variability of promotions and sales spiffs on their revenue and expense budgets.
By being able to easily introduce the possible impacts of these and other events on their budgets
they are better able to plan and optimize manufacturing capacities across their entire product line.
They estimate that first year savings from avoided stock outs is $1.2 million. Unfortunately they did
not share their anticipated increased revenue number. To find out how to put Budget Editor to work
for you, give us a call.
Click here to
Key concepts: Income statement, balance sheet, cash flow
Learn More
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www.halobi.com
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