Power BI Implementation at Daikin Europe

From SAP R/3 to S/4 HANA: why Daikin needed a new reporting landscape

Europe needed to establish new reporting systems, as their reporting and analytics environment built on SAP BusinessObjects (SAP BO) was still operating on SAP R/3. The Datawarehouse also had to be migrated from SAP BW to Azure, and reporting had to be moved from SAP BO to PowerBI.

The shift presented an ideal moment to critically review reporting choices made in the past and to design solutions that would be both scalable and future-proof. For Daikin,the objective was not only to replace SAP BO, but to reassess past reporting choices, standardize KPIs across affiliates, and build a future-proof reporting model that would support both group-level and local decision-making.

TriFinance was the lead in the project from the business side, closely cooperating with IT on the data modeling and providing guidance to ensure all business needs were met.

Transforming reporting at Daikin Europe

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Recently, Daikin took a decisive step forward by upgrading its core system from SAP R/3 to SAP S/4 HANA. This change was not just a technical migration but a strategic shift: from cost-based to account-based reporting, and from fragmented datasets to one version of the truth.

This presented an ideal opportunity to critically reflect the reporting choices made in the past and reassess and future-proof their reporting solutions. PowerBI was identified as the optimal choice.

From fragmented data to one source of truth

Previously, financial and controlling data were stored in separate tables, leading to frequent reconciliation issues between controlling and accounting data. Financial reporting relied on the FI cube, while management reporting depended on their old cost-based cube COPA. With S/4 HANA, these tables were consolidated into a single integrated ACDOCA table, finally resolving the long-standing tension between accounting and controlling data.

The transition to S/4 HANA was the driver to fully change Daikin’s way of reporting. The old reporting tool, SAP BO used the cost-based cube. But the system was slow, inflexible, and outdated. To move forward, Daikin adopted Microsoft Azure as its new data warehouse and Power BI as its enterprise-wide reporting tool.

Power BI implementation challenges

The transition from SAP to Microsoft technologies has allowed Daikin to create a completely new data model. Instead of SAP BW and BO, Daikin is now using Azure and PowerBI for the data and analytics needs.

The transition from SAP to Microsoft created unique challenges:

1. Gathering business requirements across a highly diverse stakeholder landscape, from European HQ to affiliates in 14 countries.
2. Centralizing reporting to ensure consistency while giving affiliates the flexibility they needed for day-to-day operations.
3. Reconciling old reporting (SAP BO) with new S/4 HANA and Power BI definitions.
4. Managing change at scale, bringing hundreds of users onboard in a short timeframe.
   
   

These challenges made it essential to carefully balance technical accuracy, business relevance, and user adoption.

These challenges made it essential to carefully balance technical accuracy, business relevance, and user adoption.

How to build new reporting from scratch?

“We faced two big challenges that are very hard to align. The first challenge was gathering all business requirements, while the second was implementing this new reporting in a centralized manner,” says Anke Paelman.

To gather business requirements, workshops were organized with different stakeholders, including local affiliates across Europe and HQ. The objective was to understand how they analyze their data and what insights were most critical for their operations.

This process uncovered the need for cross-functional reporting, integrating pipeline, sales, and snapshot data for a holistic view. TriFinance worked to align these requirements into a reporting flow that provided both granularity and big-picture insights.

Cross-functional reporting

To make well-informed decisions the different stakeholders are in need of a cross-functional reporting view, integrating data from various sources to provide a holistic understanding of the business.

Gradually new data sources were brought into the reporting scope.As the data model expanded, the TriFinance team needed to make smart decisions on how to distribute the information across different reporting models.

Designing multiple data models in Power BI

One of the biggest shifts was moving from SAP BW/BO to Power BI datasets built on Azure. Rather than one monolithic model, TriFinance designed several Power BI models:

“We started to build multiple data models in PowerBI, all focusing on different areas,” explains Fleur Snauwaert. “For example, a customer dataset focusing on all customer-related data. A more high-level dataset containing more aggregated data from all different reporting scopes (Pipeline, Sales, Snapshot data, …)”

As all the data was already available in Azure, it became possible for users to easily jump from the high-level report to a more detailed report using the same dimensions that are built in Azure.

Centralization

The second challenge was centralization: how to maintain only a small range of reports without losing the flexibility of the business needs.

“We did it by giving the end-user a lot of flexibility in how to use the reports,” says Anke Paelman. “End users were given input options to partially decide what they want to analyze in the reporting, always keeping in mind the bigger centralized structure of the different reports. The personalized views of the end users can be saved and they can easily navigate to their partially personalized views of the dashboards.”

Group-wide definitions of Measures were defined to create a single source of truth. There used to be a lot of miscommunication between the affiliates and HQ SBUs as they were always using different reporting and different figures. Now there is one way of reporting with the same definitions and the same key figures, which should smoothen communication.

The dashboards also provide the same view on data from management and employee perspectives. This increases cost efficiency by avoiding duplication of functions and creates transparency by having one truth.

Action-driven reporting

In the old BO system, users mainly worked with tables. These provided information but required a lot of time for analysis and interpretation. Business needs had outgrown this approach.

“We aimed to replace static tables with action-driven reports,” Fleur Snauwaert says. “At a glance, users should see whether performance meets targets and how it compares to last year or to defined goals.

High-level conclusions need to be clear immediately. From there, users should be able to drill down effortlessly into the details through interactive drill-through pages.

Reconciliation and KPI standardization in Power BI

One of the key challenges was reconciling the old reporting in BO with the new Power BI key figures.
The move to S/4 HANA required the TriFinance team to rebuild definitions from scratch.

This created the opportunity to standardize definitions such as Net Sales and Discounts, across all affiliates. In the past, exceptions were often granted locally. Today, we aim for one uniform definitions on group level.

The shift, however, created reconciliation conflicts. Figures in the new model do not always match historic reports. Explaining these discrepancies is essential. Managing this change is complex because of its scope and impact on both local entities and headquarters.

The Big Bang roll-out of sales dashboards

The result was a successful roll-out of standardized sales dashboards to all European affiliates in a single coordinated effort. Internally, this became known as the “Big Bang,” as Daikin had never attempted such a large-scale launch at once. It was both stressful and rewarding: in April and May, a new roll-out was scheduled nearly every day for either sales employees or sales managers.

Training liaisons to drive adoption

The journey started in December 2023 with the first go-live in Belgium, involving 120 users. Following this pilot, Daikin trained key users – called liaisons – from all affiliates. These liaisons came to HQ for in-depth training on the new reports, semantic models, and functionalities developed in the months leading up to the roll-out. They also provided crucial input to ensure each affiliate was ready for its go-live.

Hyper care and ongoing support

After each deployment, affiliates received intensive hyper care support to guarantee a smooth transition into daily operations. Once stabilized, ownership was gradually handed over to the operational teams, backed by extensive documentation.

Scaling user adoption across Europe

 By May 2024, after 14 affiliates had gone live, Daikin already had 915 monthly users on the system. The focus has since shifted to user adoption: helping affiliates better understand the reports and embedding them into decision-making processes to further increase usage.