BaxterProphet Planning Analytics, Smarter Reporting for Smarter Decisions
Historically, BaxterProphet’s legacy reporting did a great job providing users with large exports of detailed data. Users had access to all of the details they needed to create their own pivot tables, charts, and graphs to analyze data outside of BaxterProphet.
We recognized that having to summarize and analyze data outside of BaxterProphet took up a lot of time and was a huge gap in our product.
While we wanted to provide easy access to data visualizations and trends, we also understood that the ability to have a tabular view of detailed data was still important. This is why our first phase of the Planning Analytics project was focused on converting all of our tabular legacy reports to Analytics Data Dashboards. This ensured users could still access the data in the format they were used to but moving to the Data Dashboard format provided much faster access to data (up to twenty times faster in some cases!), and interactive and improved filtering capabilities.
The next phase of Planning Analytics was focused on developing analysis dashboards which stray away from our legacy tabular report format and provide visualizations with charts and graphs. These dashboards are a collection of different visualization widgets that were specifically designed with our customers’ needs in mind.
Baxter Planning’s Center of Excellence team worked directly with customers and internal Baxter Planners to gather feedback to understand the data that is most important and how best to visualize it to provide the most value. Because of this, the dashboards help elevate planners’ data analysis to be more strategic and save time. Users are able to identify issues, determine corrective actions, analyze trends, and keep a close eye on data metrics to ensure supply chain goals will be met. Users are even able to drill into details of data by interacting with the charts and graphs. All of this is done within BaxterProphet and without the need for other analysis tools.
As of today, there are eight analysis dashboards available, with the Min Analysis dashboard being one of the most recent to be released. This dashboard provides an improved workflow to the Min Review process that enables planners to quickly and easily identify Min Deltas that need review.
The analysis dashboards will continue to be our development focus. Rather than providing users with detailed data and relying on them to summarize, we are changing our approach to start with summarized data and provide customers the ability to drill down into the details when necessary. The Center of Excellence team is continuing to gather and incorporate customer feedback to develop new dashboards and enhance existing analytics functionality regularly.
The Center of Excellence team partners with Customer Success and Technology to ensure continuous strategic improvement and to maximize customer value in the following focus areas:
- Best Practice Processes
- Performance Improvements
- Product Education & Help Documentation
Kimberlin Marston
Manager, Center of Excellence
Kimberlin began her career at Baxter Planning in 2015 as a Supply Chain Planner. While working closely with customers Kimberlin was able to identify enhancement opportunities to Baxter Planning’s software and processes that would benefit customers and provide additional value. She played a key role in the development of several new features and Best Practice processes. In 2017, Kimberlin was named as a Supply Chain “Pro to Know” by Supply and Demand Chain Executive magazine.
In 2018, Baxter Planning recognized the need to focus on strategic customer success and launched the Center of Excellence department. Kimberlin’s passion for continuous improvement and customer success made her the perfect fit to lead the Center of Excellence team. Today the Center of Excellence team works to maximize customer value by monitoring Best Practice adoption, developing and improving Best Practice processes, and providing thorough Help documentation and training.
Kimberlin is a native to Austin, Texas where Baxter Planning is headquartered. She enjoys doing hot yoga and taking her paddle board out on the lakes surrounding Austin.
