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Qlik > Case Studies > Alabama Farmers Cooperative grows profits with QlikView ® — retail operations improve efficiency

Alabama Farmers Cooperative grows profits with QlikView ® — retail operations improve efficiency

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics

Applicable Industries

Agriculture

Applicable Functions

Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Inventory Management
Real-Time Location System (RTLS)

Services

Data Science Services

The Challenge

Alabama Farmers Cooperative, Inc. (AFC) is a regional federated supply and marketing agricultural cooperative that provides value to its members. The organization, with annual sales of more than $300 million and more than 2,300 employees, has grown through a series of joint ventures and acquisitions. However, AFC was greatly challenged to determine product margins and profitability accurately. Data was stored in various systems, and reporting was a cumbersome, manual process. Because of this difficulty, profitability analysis could only be done on a monthly basis, and confined to a small subset of the more than 3,000 product lines AFC carries. Seasonal variability is a mainstay of its business, so “managing uncertainty” is a way of life with a tremendous impact on profitability.

About The Customer

Alabama Farmers Cooperative, Inc. (AFC) is a regional federated supply and marketing agricultural cooperative that provides value to its members. Organized in 1936 and governed by a board of directors elected by its membership, AFC operates for the benefit of its 47 member associations, which include approximately 90 retail locations. Through diversity and strong leadership, AFC has become one of the largest farmer-owned agriculture-related businesses in the Southeastern United States. This complex organization, with annual sales of more than $300 million and more than 2,300 employees, has grown through a series of joint ventures, including Agri-AFC, a purchasing organization, as well as acquisitions, such as Anderson’s Peanuts, a major national marketer of seeds and raw peanuts; Biologic, a developer of forage blends for wild game; Bonnie Plant Farm, one of the largest suppliers of vegetables, herbs and flowering annuals in the continental U.S.; and SouthFresh Farms, a leading grower and processor of premium quality catfish.

The Solution

In the span of only four months, about a dozen QlikView applications have been developed by one person in AFC’s Computer Services group and deployed to AFC’s executive team, finance department, store managers, sales managers and salespeople. Financial applications provide the management team with in-depth insight into AFC’s finances from the regional level all the way down to individual products. This enables AFC to identify the most profitable product lines and the most effective channels to distribute its products, and also to forecast demand based on past sales. Inventory applications enable each of AFC’s retail outlets to view not only their own inventory, but also the inventory of other locations – reducing duplicate purchasing and accelerating product sell-through. Sales applications provide insight into the sales performance of geographic regions and individual sales representatives. With Publisher, users only have to log in once to get access to all of their applications, and developers have a streamlined way to push out new applications.

Operational Impact

Management has both deeper visibility into operations and a better understanding of the overall business picture, making more informed decisions.
The retail stores are benefiting as well. Having “one-click” access to sales performance and inventory makes them more efficient.
In addition, the inventory repository allows them to provide better customer service, since all of the product information is instantly available.

Quantitative Benefit