Russian Railways Drives Efficiency Improvements with Real-Time Reports from SAP HANA

[roman_galaktionov]

     Russian Railways is the largest transportation service provider in Russia. The mission of my group—management accounting—is to maximize the efficiency of the organization so that we can consistently maintain operations within the restricted prices that we charge.

     One of the biggest challenges we faced was tracking several thousand inventory items across the enterprise—and then generating timely reports that allowed us to make informed decisions based on fresh and comprehensive data. Pulling together these complex, multidimensional reports took significant effort—and time. In some cases it took almost three days to generate a monthly cost distribution report, which in turn led to delays in scheduling and timing.

After reviewing our options for achieving up-to-the-minute reporting that could leverage all our data, we chose SAP HANA. We ran a POC in just three months and saw that SAP HANA could dramatically speed report generation and information analysis—enabling us to greatly improve operational efficiency. SAP Active Embedded Support onsite-engineering services helped us to install the solution and quickly transfer our existing solutions onto NetWeaver Business Warehouse powered by SAP HANA.

     Now that we’ve centralized all management accounting data in SAP HANA, we can analyze it in near-real time—down to the smallest details of each unit of financial data. We also reduced the volume of stored data by three times—saving valuable storage capacity. For the first time, we can quickly leverage all our information resources to make timelier decisions and improve productivity. Cost distribution reports that used to take up to three days now can be generated in 20 minutes, and cost allocation analysis is 40 times faster with SAP HANA. Thanks to the power of SAP HANA, my group can analyze information in new and different ways and make a more meaningful contribution to the success of the business through more informed decision-making, reduced planning cycles, and increased efficiency.

     To learn more about us, visit our website at www.eng.rzd.ru