Kennametal Standardizes on Cognos BI for Business Performance

Metal cutting tools manufacturer uses business intelligence across 17 countries to support its customer acquisition process

Metal cutting tools manufacturer uses business intelligence across 17 countries to support its customer acquisition process

Burlington, MA — September 17, 2004 — Business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM) provider Cognos said that Kennametal Inc. shared its story of business performance success this week in Iselin, N.J., during the Cognos Performance 2004 conference series.

Cognos said the series of conferences showcased businesses that are achieving greater organizational success through advanced business performance management techniques.

Kennametal is the market leader in North America in metal cutting tools and is second in Europe and worldwide. The company first selected Cognos in 2003 for its "Kennametal BlackBook" business intelligence project, which supports Kennametal's Customer Acquisition Process. Kennametal required an enterprise BI solution that would help maintain high customer service levels while providing the ability to analyze sales trends.

One of the elements of the successful deployment was Cognos' ability to interoperate with Kennametal's SAP Business Warehouse and ASP.net pages. The integration allowed Kennametal to use the two systems in tandem for input, access and storage of data.

Today, Kennametal has 24-hour access to global reporting tools. It has deployed the Cognos Enterprise Business Intelligence Series across 17 countries, in seven languages, to advance its overall business performance. Kennametal said the results of the improved sales process are driving increased sales revenue through fact-based selling and reduced selling costs through increased sales productivity.

Kennametal's Customer Acquisition Process is based on industry best practice for continuously improving the way the company conducts business with its customers. Kennametal BlackBook enables four elements of this process: assessing potential of assigned accounts; prioritizing accounts; building customer profiles and creating a targeted sales plan.

"Using Cognos' sales analysis with our Customer Acquisition Process, we have been able to quickly make business-driving decisions based on actual facts as we move from an organization that is centered around sales revenue to one that is customer centric with a focus on profit generation," explained Jon Amundson, global marketing information manager, Kennametal Inc. "We have made great strides in eliminating disparate reporting and the vicious e-mail exchange of spreadsheets. Employees at all levels of our organization can now drill-down to access key information as we drive sales growth, reduce costs and drive the business to a more customer and profit-centric model."

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