Piller Blowers: Enabling data-driven decision-making with a business data fabric architecture
Explore Piller Blower’s journey with SAP
At Piller Blowers & Compressors GmbH, decisions must be made quickly to keep pace with rapidly expanding operations. To help ensure that employees have the information they need to make sound choices, the company deployed the SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud solutions – providing straightforward access to standardized KPIs across the business.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partners |
| Industrial manufacturing | Moringen, Germany | 500 employees | IBsolution GmbH and ARSA Infotech GmbH |
time savings with automated controlling.
reduction in time taken to access
month-end reports.
KPI dashboards currently in use.
Financial Controller, Piller Blowers & Compressors GmbH
Supporting rapid expansion into international markets
Piller Blowers & Compressors GmbH designs and manufactures high-performance blowers and compressors that are used in the food, pulp and paper, chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, and industrial wastewater treatment industry sectors. This family-run business based in Moringen, Germany, also has operations in the United States, Singapore, Australia, and China, as well as joint ventures in Korea, India, and Brazil.
As a growth-focused, midsize company, Piller is expanding fast. To support this rapid growth, the ability to make agile and informed decisions is key. However, with different parts of the business preparing spreadsheet-based reports manually and measuring different KPIs in different ways, getting accurate and timely information proved a challenge.
To address this, the company wanted to implement a single, unified solution that could help connect on-premise and cloud-based systems. It also wanted to standardize reporting by providing fast and straightforward access to KPIs across the business.
Using cloud technology to deliver real-time KPIs to employees
As an SAP customer, Piller wanted to consolidate business information in a data warehouse solution that would integrate tightly with its existing SAP IT landscape. The company initially implemented the on-premise SAP Business Warehouse application. However, in line with a cloud-first strategy rolling out across the company’s IT systems, Piller then decided to modernize its data warehousing. To achieve this, it deployed the SAP Datasphere solution, a cloud-based data warehouse as a service that supports a business data fabric architecture.
With help from SAP partner IBsolution GmbH, Piller implemented the solution and integrated it with a number of enterprise applications, including SAP S/4HANA and the SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Service Cloud, and SAP SuccessFactors solutions. Drawing on live data made available through SAP Datasphere, the company can now use the SAP Analytics Cloud solution to provide real-time information to managers.
At-a-glance dashboards offer convenient access to KPIs for different business areas such as HR, sales and customer service, and logistics. In addition, displaying dashboards in digital workplaces through the SAP Build Work Zone solution helps provide company-wide access to KPIs, even for employees who are not users of SAP Analytics Cloud.
Improving operational efficiency with standardized and timely reporting
With its new business data fabric architecture, employees across Piller can now make agile and informed decisions based on trusted information. Greater granularity in reporting provides Piller with the transparency it needs to refine workflows, optimizing operational efficiency and helping it establish robust processes that can scale and support business growth.
Meanwhile, specialized dashboards providing rapid access to key performance metrics for different lines of business empower employees to act quickly to investigate any anomalies and take proactive steps to mitigate issues before they become problems. For example, using the HR dashboard, managers can see where staff are due to retire shortly, so they know in advance that they need to recruit new talent for those areas.
For personnel in the company’s controlling function, real-time access to automated reports is revolutionizing the working day. Month-end reports are now available at the click of a button instead of taking two weeks to produce. And without having to spend up to 20% of their time compiling reports manually, staff can spend more time analyzing the data and acting on their findings.
Establishing in-house capabilities to support ongoing business growth
Piller is currently working on new dashboards to provide performance insights for different business areas. A purchasing dashboard is now in development, as well as an on-time delivery dashboard that will help the company enhance the customer experience by improving delivery performance.
SAP business partner ARSA Infotech GmbH is helping Piller create these new dashboards and, at the same time, providing training for in-house personnel on the development process. In this way, the in-house team will have the capabilities to develop their own dashboards in the future.
Meanwhile, the company is using business process transformation capabilities in SAP Signavio solutions to refine and streamline processes to support its rapid business expansion. Dedicated to sustainability in product development and business operations, Piller will also be implementing the SAP Sustainability Control Tower solution. Drawing on data from SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud, this solution will help Piller gain a better understanding of operational inefficiencies and act faster on trusted insights.
Want to know more about Piller?
Piller: Integrating Sales, Service, and Marketing for Smoother Customer Experiences (SAP Customer Story)
Piller: Digitalizing and Automating Company-Wide Processes to Build the Future Workplace (SAP Customer Story)
Featured partners
With a portfolio that ranges from strategy and process consulting to technology consulting, IBsolution specializes in transformation projects in ERP, data and analytics, cybersecurity, customer experience, and digitalization. The consultancy helped Piller implement SAP Datasphere and develop a number of business-specific dashboards using SAP Analytics Cloud.
Specializing in the implementation of business intelligence solutions from SAP for companies of all sizes, ARSA Infotech helps companies optimize their business processes and make decisions based on solid data foundations. The company helped Piller create specialized dashboards providing straightforward access to KPIs to support decision-making.