BENCHMARKING: GettingThe Whole Picture

Citect, the real-time intelligence software company recently launched Meta, a new benchmarking service designed to support corporateperformance benchmarking by visually sharing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) between corporate and plant managers. Designed to leverage best practices and improve capital allocation throughout an organization, the hosted, online application offers a tool to make decisions about overall performance, across multiple sites. The company plans to use Meta in the future to perform industry benchmarking, so that companies can compare their own performance against that of other, similar industry players.

Citect, which has roots in the food-and-beverage industry, recently partnered with Simplot, one of Australia’s top-ten food companies, to help it monitor cross-site improvements, and to improve KPI visibility and accessibility.

Kurt Lovell is Citect’s newly-appointed global director for Meta. Scott Druery is Citect’s managing director of South-East Asia.

AFJ: Simplot Australia is taking a trial run of Meta. How has that implementation process been? Lovell: In many ways, Simplot Australia was the innovator of Meta—they really signed up to the concept, before there was much of a product. As a result, they have very much been a partner from the beginning of our journey. So the implementation has had its challenges. As Meta’s fi rst customer, Simplot pioneered many of the features. Simplot identifi ed system constraints, specifi ed enhancements and evolved as Meta users. As with many businesses, Simplot monitors a plethora of KPIs, With Meta, they can do so more readily. Simplot’s challenge was to identify and remain focused on the KPIs that would lead to operational improvements. The challenge for all future users will be the same–monitor the same KPI across all plants, then add a second KPI. In this way you can quickly begin to see which sites really require attention. AFJ: So it’s possible to focus on too many KPIs. Druery: Remember that the K in KPI stands for 'Key'. If your list of KPIs is long, you probably have forgotten which are actually 'Key'. You don’t have to ignore the non-core KPIs, but you do need to focus. Identify the top 10. It doesn’t mean that you have to stick to those 10 forever. You might decide after three months that the action plan for a particular KPI is now in place, and it’s no longer an issue. Pick some. Focus on them. Action them. And then move to the next step. Don’t try and do everything at once. Lovell: A lack of focus inhibits buy-in. It precludes commitment to benchmarks. And it limits ownership from plant operators and managers because they think, “with all these KPI’s which ones actually matter and which should be addressed?” Simplot is focused. Meta is assisting to provide the right view across many of its sites. With the new features Meta is adding, Meta hopes to increase the buy-in from the Simplot management team and achieve international deployment. AFJ: This ability to be transparent to shareholders is interesting, and it also adds an additional level of pressure. Lovell: Yes, but it’s an interesting level of pressure. One of the nice mixes of the Meta solution is that companies have a vested interest in making sure the information they are tracking is of high integrity. The numbers have to be right, and it needs to be useful—after all, they’re using it to manage their own business internally. At the same time, that information can be used to communicate with shareholders and ultimately provide confi dential industry comparisons. In a sense, Meta has bridged the gap between what shareholders may want and the managing operational performance.

AFJ: How can Meta help SMEs in the region? Druery: In some ways, there’s a perception that Asia is playing catch-up. This isn’t necessarily true. Meta can help SMEs look at effi ciencies and best practices. Doing so is a critical competitive edge for Asia and a massive opportunity. Asia is growing quickly, and it wants that competitive edge. That’s one of the reasons why we’re releasing it now—quickly. Cut the costs and get down to business, and do it right. Spend a bit to make a bit. I think that Meta has a future in the right businesses, and food and beverage is one that will improve with it. In the past manufacturers thought they had to spend lots of money on automation—not necessarily. Let’s prove that they need to spend the money fi rst. AFJ: Meta is hosted application. Tell us more about Citect’s vision of the online-user experience. Lovell: There are three key areas here. The fi rst is accessibility. Hosted applications have an obligation to be online all the time, and Meta is no different. Industry best-practices dictate that there is something in the vicinity of 99.9-percent guaranteed uptime. This essentially means that through the year there would be fewer than eight hours of unscheduled downtime The second area is security, and there are two pieces of the security story. Is data inside the site secure from hackers, and from people who just want to use the information? We’ve structured the database and decided what levels to encrypt, according to the best practices of major-industry trendsetters. And the second piece of security is how we’re going to use the information to deploy the industry story. We have to ensure that if we do share data, it’s done in such a way that it cleansed and anonymous, so that customers are protected. Our aim is that if you don’t want anybody to know that you are using Meta, then no one will know–simple as that.

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