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Qualifa: Closing Leads Faster and Increasing Profits
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
Applicable Industries
- Professional Service
- Software
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
- Remote Control
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Quentin Villon, a non-technical data analyst at Qualifa, faced significant challenges in managing and utilizing the vast amount of data collected by the company. Internally, he relied on Excel to manually build activity reports, a process that took two hours daily and resulted in a cumbersome 20MB spreadsheet. This method was prone to errors, with broken formulas and other issues, making it a nightmare to manage. The reports were also delayed, going out a day after the activity took place, which meant they could only acknowledge performance rather than influence it. Generating commission reports was even more time-consuming, taking two days each month. Externally, creating campaign insight reports for potential clients was a labor-intensive process that required several days of manual effort. These reports were crucial for client acquisition but were not reusable, adding to the inefficiency.
About The Customer
Qualifa is a B2B lead generation company specializing in telephone and email marketing for the technology sector. Operating globally from call centers in the UK and New Zealand, they serve clients such as Cisco, HP, Dell, Symantec, and McAfee. Known for their superior results and aggressive pricing, Qualifa has experienced explosive growth since its founding. The company uses a homegrown application called 'Contaca' to manage internal processing and client data, supporting 150-200 concurrent users. Their technical environment includes an Intel Xeon E5-2670 processor, 30 GB of RAM, and a SQL Server with 160 tables and 45 million rows of data, totaling 11.5GB.
The Solution
Quentin explored various data visualization tools like QlikView, Tableau, and Gooddata but found them too technical for his non-IT background. A friend recommended Sisense, which he quickly downloaded, installed, and configured. Within hours, Quentin was able to produce useful dashboards on top of a complex data model. The process flow starts with a 'Big Table' where all calculations at the lowest level occur. This table feeds into other tables for further calculations based on required results, such as daily and monthly team performance. By making all calculations in the cube rather than the web application, they achieved faster processing times. The data feeding into BigTable comes from views, allowing them to import only the necessary data, significantly reducing update times and enabling real-time statistics. Quentin embedded Sisense widgets and dashboards into their Contaca software, allowing specific roles to access relevant data. This integration facilitated rapid adoption among their 200 users, providing near real-time data and instant responses from a single average server.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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