Bayer builds crisis management dashboard for data-driven decisions using datamarts in Power BI

Prioritizing health and safety for all in uncertain times

People around the world rely on innovative products created by Bayer to help improve their quality of life. The maker of Bayer Aspirin, Alka-Seltzer, and Aleve, as well as numerous high-quality food, feed, and plant-based raw materials, has been making ground-breaking contributions to the pharmaceutical, personal health, and agriculture industries for more than 150 years.

Within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) country group, a dynamic region that’s essential for Bayer production facilities and business operation, maintaining business continuity is critical. During the COVID-19 pandemic the Bayer Sustainability, Safety, Health & Environment (SSHE) team needed to protect the organization’s employees and partners, while also keeping business moving within its production facilities. During this time of crisis and uncertainty, the Bayer SSHE team couldn’t waste valuable time on manual data entry, merging spreadsheets and searching for information across different platforms. They needed a department-led data tool that combined reporting, self-service queries, and decision-making insights all in one place. 

Creating centralized solutions with datamarts in Power BI

 Mathew Grant, Head of Sustainability, Safety, Health & Environment (SSHE) ASEAN and ANZ (Australia and New Zealand) at Bayer, started evaluating Power BI with the help of Matthias Eisenack, Portfolio Manager for Financial Performance and Robert Firneburg, Finance Manager Radiology APAC, who were part of the team from Corporate Controlling that created the Bayer Finance 360 App using Power BI.

With the aim of reducing manual efforts, ensuring consistency, and increasing time for providing insights, the three collaborators found Power-BI datamarts to be a perfect fit. The fully web-based tool ingests all relevant information across sources—including multiple Power BI dataflows for Bayer employee incidents, FTEs, and daily worldwide COVID data from public sources and situation analysis summaries—into a single location.

Datamarts offer a full range of capabilities including data preparation, modelling, and provision of the data in one self-service capability. At-a-glance access to all relevant COVID-19 data replaces a wide range of separated excel files and presentations. The automation capabilities allow shifting effort from consolidating data to analyzing and providing recommendations.

 “The twists and turns in the crisis management environment attracted us to datamarts in Power BI. This was a one-time-investment for a self-sufficient solution,” says Grant.

Improved crisis management with the COVID Monitor 

With fully interactive Power BI reports, crisis management teams can quickly understand critical information, like active COVID cases, travel recommendations, and risk level indicators. This real-time analysis helps crisis managers make collaborative decisions with precision and speed. Users can view their own mix of data including travel recommendations, policies, and guidance on COVID-19. “It’s providing standardized risk information,” says Firneburg. “The datamart automates the whole process, and it’s all on one page.”

The self-service capability in datamarts is built with analysts and business users in mind, unlocking powerful analytics tools previously reserved for IT professionals. The self-service accessibility of the product supports cross-functional collaboration within Bayer.

The team built the COVID Crisis Management Dashboard rapidly, without “super techie IT people,” says Firneburg. “None of us have IT backgrounds, which is the beauty of Power BI. Businesspeople can connect data beyond one silo of thinking.” 

And the self-service capabilities empower users to solve problems fast. “Before, we’d have to pick up the phone, file a ticket, wait for someone to build a SQL database, and eventually have a solution—often after the problem is already over,” says Eisenack. “With datamarts in Power BI, we can build an end-to-end solution in under an hour.” 

Unlocking insights for future crisis situations—and everyday business needs

Having this cloud-based, scalable technology infrastructure in place means that Bayer can make proactive decisions on COVID-19 protocols—but for Bayer, the COVID-19 dashboard is just the beginning. The SSHE team plans to integrate datamarts in Power BI into crisis, safety, and health management throughout ASEAN. 

By utilizing the dashboard as a blueprint for future events, the organization will be equipped with the insights needed to handle unforeseen and unprecedented crisis situations. Bayer will use this technology to unlock new, real-time data insights that support the health and safety of the organization’s more than 100,000 employees around the world. 

“The datamart consolidates information in a meaningful manner,” says Grant. “Collectively, it really helps to understand the risk that's been faced in other countries and how that's potentially going to affect our workforce and sites, and what's happening in our communities.” 

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