Eventful Conferences has spent the last four months conducting extensive customer centric research with over 40 Chemicals organizations using SAP and 60+ individuals across North America. These individuals came from a wide range of functional areas within the chemicals industry including supply chain, manufacturing, IT, development, and leadership roles across organizations. Both business and IT were represented in our interviews and research. To balance the customer research, we also spoke with partners and SAP to hear their perspectives.
We asked these chemicals professionals, through both round table discussions and one-on-one conversation, what challenges they faced day to day and their thoughts on the most pertinent issues facing chemicals organizations. The Best Practices for Chemicals Conference will strive to address each challenge, pain point and trend by providing solution-oriented presentations, backed by specific evidence and packaged to provide the audience with clear takeaways on how to achieve similar results.
We will elaborate more about these challenges and issues in a blog series which starts today.
* Analytics – Data & Decisions
Having sound data to take meaningful action was the thread most common to the various issues and concerns brought up by our chemical industry representatives. The need for data accuracy to drive decision making with standardization and transparency was stressed by all participants in the roundtables and in the interviews. Further, all recognized this as a key point of competitive advantage – that the ability to best leverage data would open up significant possibilities by showing areas for improvement and opportunities for cost savings. Data analysis must encompass simulation capabilities so we can stop getting known answers to known questions. ‘What if’ scenarios will lead to a deeper understanding of the business.
It’s impossible, though, to derive these insights and analyses without the proper tools and resources. Chemicals organizations are eager to learn about the myriad reporting tools available and their capabilities. Some of these tools exist nascently within SAP, but many of our research representatives felt they lacked adequate training to fully take advantage of them. Once you have the tools, the training, and the results, organizations want to know best practices to ensure that those insights are actionable and result in meaningful change.
* How do I take my analytics from average to transformative? How can we go from reactive to predictive using my reporting tools?
* What are some ways to best impart the importance of analytics and business decisions to our employees/users? How can I ensure maximum user adoption?
* How can I make sure the right people have the right tools? Sometimes you need photoshop, sometimes you just need Instagram.
* What are some ways that I can avoid bad inputs to the system? What are ways to reduce manual input altogether? How do I automate and with what tools or equipment?
* How can I take my company from dashboards and reports to action items and plans? How do I integrate our data into our business model?
* Can I use analytics and leverage my system to reduce individual workloads, or people costs altogether?
To get answers to these and many more questions view the agenda and register now! for the Best Practices for Chemicals Conference, being held in Austin/TX on March 6-7, 2018!
We look forward to see you there!
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