When Alpret Control Specialists identified the role that business intelligence could play in the organisation, it was initially discouraged by the high cost of solutions available in the market. However, when it engaged with Synergy Computing, a provider of BI solutions based on the Cognos platform, it was pleased to discover that it could benefit from improved organisational understanding at a justifiable cost.
A division of industrial giant Grinaker-LTA, Alpret Control Specialists is a major vendor of Process Control Instrumentation (PCI) in southern Africa. The equipment it supplies is used in controlling manufacturing processes in heavy industries such as petroleum, chemical, oil refining, pulp and paper, mining and minerals and the like, throughout Southern and Eastern Africa.
According to Pierre Pieterse, Divisional Manager Sales Support at Alpret, management recognised the value which could be added by introducing business intelligence software tools. "We were pleased, when Synergy Computing submitted a solution that not only provided us with the immediate OLAP (online analytical processing) functionality that we required, but also an upgrade path to cater for expansion of the system," he says.
Bruce Harris, Business Development Manager at Synergy Computing, explains the functionality that the technology brings to Alpret: "PowerPlay enables businesses like Alpret to perform multidimensional analysis, create reports, and share them readily with the users of such information, thereby enabling them to make better business decisions and drive company performance.
"Because it doesn't require a high level of technical skill, the solution can be used at any level across an organisation, allowing users to readily explore large volumes of summarised data with sub-second response times."
PowerPlay draws information from relational databases to model and build PowerCubes - optimised data sets that enable users to perform multi-dimensional analysis with quick response times. "The Cubes can be small or large, containing more than a billion rows of data and 2 million categories. With rich and fast-response data sources, users can analyse multiple aspects of the business to see how any given value changes over time; how it compares across geography; how it changes against any other business dimension and more," continues Harris.
Presently, says Pieterse, Alpret is using the Cognos toolset for sales and purchasing analysis and forecasting. "Because it provides the ability to analyse historical sales trends, we are increasingly able to predict the way forward for our company. We have the ability to change the rules of the game in terms of 'what if' scenarios, and believe that the implementation of the BI tools gives us the flexibility to adapt to the changing needs of our industry," he explains.
The initial deployment was achieved by Synergy in minimal time, contributing to the highly competitive cost of the solution. Says Pieterse: "We were up and running with a 10-user system for senior executives and management in just one month. We're seeing information from our ERP system that we'd never taken into account before."
While Pieterse says the company is still in the process of gauging the value of the system, he notes that already it has intensified Alpret's focus on and commitment to its customers.
"We're delighted with the functionality, the ease of use in terms of data extraction, and analysis that the solution provides. The benefit of Cognos lies in the ability of the user to extract value from data in the form of in-depth analysis and graphic interpretations. Based on the success of the initial project, we will be implementing the financial module in the near future," he concludes.
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