In the modern information age, data should be considered a precious corporate resource. However, it is only beneficial when coupled with the ability to derive deep insights from the available information by using analytics to provide focused details around business areas such as sales, stock and financial performance.
With a strong background in enterprise resource planning (ERP), IT Dynamics (a subsidiary of Kwaden) has long understood the value of data, having provided a hosted ERP solution tailored for small to medium-sized manufacturers or importers. In providing these customers with a world-class ERP solution at a fraction of the cost, IT Dynamics uses the power of information technology to transform the world of work.
The company’s successful outsourced solution provides its customers with a managed infrastructure and flexible deployment of services, as well as access to highly skilled IT and financial business professionals.
Challenge
Nonetheless, IT Dynamics still faced challenges, notably the timely deployment of BI data cubes to end-customers. The cube volumes impacted the customer’s ability to download the cube before having the ‘latest data at their fingertips’. The customer still needed to ‘massage’ the data into their format, before analysing it, which often proved frustrating and time-consuming.
Therefore the company required assistance to support the complex design and development of various applications that included Sales, Stock, Financial Management and Customer Profitability for multiple end-customers across all industries and regions.
Solution
Keyrus, thanks to the vast experience of their experts in business and data analytics, helped the company to resolve these challenges with the implementation of a QlikView original equipment manufacturer (OEM) solution. This solution provides the QlikView Access Portal for easy access and ‘anytime/anywhere’ analytics. QlikView enables the business to embed analytical applications as part of its end-customers solutions. These applications are designed to provide deep analytics on their sales, stock and financial performance, resulting in a significant BI service contribution by IT Dynamics.
Something unique is that these solutions, while standard at the outset, are built to automatically customise each embedded application according to end-customer, based on their individual, organisational data.
Furthermore, the sales application tracks sales and looks at comparative trends, offering comprehensive reporting. Also, there is a ‘sandbox’ available for the user to create ad-hoc reports ‘on the fly’. Meanwhile, the stock application offers a clear view of the current stock situation, along with an idea of the future, thanks to predictive analysis based on historical trends.
Additionally, there is a financial application which provides a detailed analysis of the income statement and balance sheet, while the customer profitability application details the income statement by customer and by product. Budgets are also available within the sales, financial and customer profitability applications.
This project is the culmination of a long-standing partnership between Keyrus and IT Dynamics, which has resulted in successful client-facing solutions. By bringing Keyrus in with its OEM-embedded experience and strong partnership with Qlik, has made it possible to roll out a large-scale standardised solution for easy implementation, but then also capable of being easily customised according to the specific end-customer needs. This enabled IT Dynamics to build a new analytics product that ultimately opened up a whole new BI service stream for the business.
Benefit
According to Kwaden Services BI Team, the Keyrus implementation has taken the company a step closer to its goal of delivering a complete ‘self-service’ platform.
“Our end-customers are thrilled at having access to intuitive data and great visualisations, and the solution addresses our own core competencies – which are to standardise, automate, simplify, centralise and provide consistency. Furthermore, the implementation of this solution has significantly reduced support queries from our end-customers, and we are excited about how effective it is and its future potential”, says Kwaden Services Senior BI Consultant.
“We are pleased that the combination of a world-class solution and our own in-house expertise has provided IT Dynamics with an offering that has not only boosted their business but also had a huge and positive impact on their end-customers,” concludes Greg Guye, CEO at Keyrus.