BI investment pays for itself in three months

Since implementing business intelligence and data analytics software from QlikView South Africa, document solutions company Gestetner has already been able to make some key decisions which have resulted in the investment paying for itself in just three months.

Gestetner is currently on a drive to make the best use of technology throughout the business and had been looking to make an investment in a suitable BI system.

"Performance analysis is a critical element of our BI solution as we need to be able to see at a glance how the company, as well as our individual salespeople are performing," says Grant Skinner, CIO at Gestetner. "We met with a number of vendors, but QlikView understood our requirements and was able to deliver a solution that addressed those needs.

"The different levels of complexity in our business needed to be managed better," continues Skinner. "Essentially, we have two main areas of operation - sales and service. From a sales point of view, we need a day-to-day analysis of performance. We need to see where sales are up and where they`ve slowed down, and how the various geographical areas are performing. Our previous Excel-based system, linked to our ERP system, was not able to provide us with the kind of information analysis and reporting we need to support the growth the company has enjoyed over the past few years. With functionality that includes being able to pre-define certain performance indicators and then display these graphically, QlikView is far better suited to where Gestetner is now, and where we believe it will be in the future."

Gestetner has adopted a phased approach to the implementation. The first phase, which focused heavily on sales, is complete. The next phase will see the focus shift to service and management. Because everything is connected, the team found that raising questions in a particular area of the business could result in an answer being provided for another division. "We`re in an industry where clients relate to service, and service alone," continues Skinner. "Technology is merely the tool that enables us to provide this service. Ultimately, competitive pricing and value-added customer care is what will keep us in business."

QlikView differs from traditional BI tools in that it does not make use of OLAP and is able to analyse massive amounts of data at unprecedented speed by loading data directly into memory. Using 64-bit`s advanced memory capacity, QlikView is able to provide summary level metrics and record level detail on the same architecture.

"When we started working with Gestetner, they were looking to reduce the volume of reports generated and the time spent analysing these reports," says Adam Barry-Smith, branch manager of QlikView. "They have a large number of stock items and components which they need to keep track of, in addition to the daily sales figures.

"We`re now able to make decisions in real-time and, by being aware of potential problems earlier on, we can adopt a more proactive approach to planning. QlikView is also very easy to maintain, so we are constantly enhancing our data models to improve our analysis capabilities," concludes Skinner.