"ZAP delivered on each promise they made to Ascom—and from my experience, that’s a rarity. Whether they were talking about support or training, or even being available when they were on vacation— ZAP made me feel like a #1 client."

Ascom and ZAP Case Study

Industry: Manufacturing
Website: www.ascom.com
Requirements: Produce reports across various business units, manipulate out-of-the-box AX reports, produce ad-hoc reports, produce complex analytics.
Data Sources: Microsoft Dynamics AX

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Ascom and ZAP Case Study

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Background

Ascom Network Testing is the wireless communications drive-test market leader with nearly 40% market share. With more than 650 customers in 140+ countries, including the top 20 mobile operators, major infrastructure suppliers, and service providers, TEMS is the world’s most trusted technology for deploying, monitoring and assuring quality of service for broadband wireless networks.

Ash Aly, Senior Global ERP Manager for Ascom Network Testing, is responsible for 13 different business units around the globe that are all maintained within Ascom’s Microsoft Dynamics AX landscape.

 

Challenges

Ascom was plagued by lack of visibility into their operational Microsoft Dynamics AX data. The initial implementation of their AX system was successfully completed; however, it did not include the critical component of providing a robust, easy-to-use, and reliable reporting solution as a part of the baseline implementation. As a result, they had a solid and operational ERP system, but minimal visibility into the data housed within.

Realising they needed a way to extract the massively valuable data stored within AX, they looked to their system support partners to advise them on the best path to take.

The advice was to create ‘custom’ reports that would provide their users with the information they required. As they began to move forward along this course, Ascom began to uncover many shortcomings with this approach including the inability to:

  • Produce reports across various business units
  • Manipulate out-of-the-box AX reports
  • Produce ad-hoc reports
  • Produce complex analytics

And the list went on. Ascom realised they needed an Enterprise-wide BI solution.

Solution

Once they had determined they were looking to purchase a BI solution, Ascom employed a thorough request for proposal (RFP) process. Once they started the process, they identified several BI vendors in the marketplace. After starting their search, it was immediately clear that many vendors offered solutions that didn’t work or only went part of the way. Even fewer had solutions that truly integrated within Microsoft Dynamics AX seamlessly.

Once Ascom’s detailed due diligence was completed, only one product stood out: ZAP Data Hub.

The outcome of choosing ZAP Data Hub was a radical improvement in visibility of data in terms of reporting, analysis, executive management dashboards, and ZAP had an incredible amount of analytics out-of-the-box. In terms of post-deployment they had everything they asked for: support and a product that was delivering the information that they needed. Whether they needed additional training, support on building additional analytics, ZAP was there to help them.

Benefits

  • Rapid Setup: With an extensive list of pre-built analytics, ZAP reduced the total time to market substantially.
  • User Friendly: The simple, web-based interface means that employees from all parts of the organisation can use ZAP to get the information they require.
  • Unsurpassed Support: ZAP kept every single promise that they made-from training to support-ZAP was there for us.

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