Case studies / Escondida (CEIM)
Business intelligence & ERP — short case
Standing up an institution's first business intelligence capability
A non-profit foundation running one of Chile's leading industrial and mining training organisations, with a multi-million budget to plan and control, no reporting platform of any kind, and a set of internally built satellite platforms waiting on an ERP to integrate with. The capability had to be built before the tooling could mean anything.
Headline figures
- Basis
- Tableau Prep, Desktop and Server, deployed where no prior 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 today trains more than 33,000 people a year.
An institution at that scale planned and controlled a multi-million budget across several functions, and did so without a reporting platform. Numbers were assembled by hand for each request, which meant that by the time an executive question had an answer it was answering a slightly different question. Around the core, the IT area had built a series of satellite platforms — internal systems serving individual functions — each holding its own slice of the operational picture, with no ERP at the centre for them to report into.
Diagnosis
An organisation that has never had business intelligence does not primarily have a tooling problem. Install a server into a place with no agreed definitions and you get five functions holding five contradictory versions of the same number — which is worse than having no dashboard, because now the disagreement carries authority.
So the order of work mattered more than the choice of tool. The KPI framework and the ownership of each figure were agreed with executive leadership before anything was built. Only then did the platform have something to be right about.
Mandate and scope
- Reporting lineExecutive leadership
- 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, taking the system live together with its integration to the institution's internally developed satellite platforms within six months. 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 | No platform | BI platform in production | Tableau Prep, Desktop and Server | 1st |
| Functions served | Assembled on request | Standing executive reporting | General Management, HR, Finance, Commercial, Operations | 5 |
| ERP | None | SAP Business One live, integrated with the in-house satellite platforms | Implementation and initial integration both delivered within six months, by a multidisciplinary team in which I led this workstream; integration with further platforms continued afterwards | 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 | — |
What I carry forward
- Agree the definition before you build the dashboard. Five functions with five versions of one number is worse than no dashboard, because the disagreement now looks official.
- Integration is the deliverable, not the afterthought. An ERP that ignores the platforms an institution already runs on becomes one more island. The in-house satellite systems were integrated from the initial delivery.
- Give every figure a named owner. A platform nobody owns decays back into spreadsheets within a year.
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.