Case studies / Escondida (CEIM)
Fundación Educacional Escondida (CEIM) · Industrial and mining technical training — Chile — short case
Standing up an institution's first business intelligence capability
CEIM, one of Chile’s leading industrial and mining training organisations, assembled its executive reporting by hand in Excel and PowerPoint, over a legacy ERP due for replacement. The KPI definitions were agreed with executive leadership first; the institution’s first business intelligence platform went into production — with standing reports for five functions — and SAP Business One replaced the legacy ERP in a full migration, integrated with the in-house systems the IT area had already built.
Headline figures
- Basis
- Tableau Prep, Desktop and Server, deployed where no prior BI platform existed
- Basis
- General Management, Human Resources, Finance, Commercial and Operations
- Basis
- Implementation and initial integration with the institution's internally developed satellite platforms, both delivered within six months
- Frame
- Delivered by a multidisciplinary team in which I led this workstream. Integration with further platforms continued after go-live.
The starting point
Fundación Educacional Escondida is a non-profit corporation that runs CEIM, the Centro de Entrenamiento Industrial y Minero. The centre was created under the umbrella of Escondida | BHP in the mid-1990s and opened to the wider industrial and mining sector in 2002. It operates from Antofagasta, with further sites in Iquique, La Serena and Santiago, and on its published figures trains more than 33,000 people a year.
Reporting was assembled by hand in Excel and PowerPoint: by the time an executive question had an answer, the question had changed. The operation ran on a legacy ERP due for replacement, and the IT area had built a series of in-house systems — the satellite platforms — each serving one function with its own slice of the operational picture. These platforms were not integrated with the legacy ERP; integrating them was one of the reasons for implementing SAP Business One.
Diagnosis
Installed before definitions are agreed, a BI platform gives five functions five versions of the same number, each looking official because it comes from the platform. That is worse than having no platform at all.
The KPI framework and the owner of each figure were therefore agreed with executive leadership before anything was built, so the platform launched with one agreed definition per figure.
Mandate and scope
- Reporting lineExecutive leadership
- TeamAround 50 people reported into the directorate.
- OwnedPlanning and control of the institutional budget; the KPI framework and performance management model; the business intelligence platform and its reporting; the bespoke budgeting and forecasting solution.
- Led within a teamThe SAP Business One implementation was delivered by a multidisciplinary team. I led this workstream — managing the SAP Business One and Tableau implementation vendors — through the migration from the legacy ERP: remapping the old chart of accounts to the new one and defining its level of detail, transferring stocks and account balances, building a product master from scratch because the institution had none, system testing, and training the existing users. The system went live integrated with the institution's internally developed satellite platforms; integration with further platforms continued afterwards.
- Not ownedTraining programme design and delivery.
What was built
Results
| Measure | Before | After | Basis of measurement | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Institutional reporting | Excel and PowerPoint, by hand | BI platform in production | Dashboards and standing reporting on Tableau Prep, Desktop and Server | 1st |
| Functions served | Assembled on request | Standing executive reporting | General Management, HR, Finance, Commercial, Operations | 5 |
| ERP | Legacy system due for replacement | SAP Business One live, with the first in-house platforms integrated | Full migration — chart of accounts remapped, stocks and balances transferred, product master built from scratch — with initial integration, within six months, by a multidisciplinary team in which I led this workstream | 6 mo. |
| Budgeting and forecasting | Spreadsheets | Bespoke solution | Financial, budgetary and operational information integrated for executive decision-making | — |
| Performance management | No agreed definitions | KPI framework with named ownership | Agreed with executive leadership | — |
“I had the opportunity to work with Guillermo Cruz Garri during his tenure as Director of Management Control and Planning at CEIM, a position from which he led the organisation’s strategic planning and budget formulation processes. In that period Guillermo demonstrated solid professional capability, a focus on meeting objectives and a high level of commitment to the responsibilities he took on. His rigour, reliability and willingness to take on challenges contributed significantly to the achievement of the targets set.”
What I carry forward
- Agree the definition before you build the dashboard. The order of work matters more than the choice of tool.
- Integration is the deliverable, not an afterthought. An ERP that does not connect to the systems already in use adds one more disconnected source; the satellite platforms were integrated from the first delivery.
- Give every figure a named owner. Figures without an owner stop being maintained, and users fall back on their own spreadsheets.
Scope and measurement note
Reflects work delivered between April 2019 and December 2022. The six-month figure covers both the SAP Business One implementation and its initial integration with the institution's internally developed satellite platforms, delivered by a multidisciplinary team in which I led this workstream. Integration with further platforms continued after go-live and is not included in that figure. Institutional financial figures, programme data and internal reporting content are omitted. Closing and reporting processes were subject to annual external audit.
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