Hella Handel Austria, a leading worldwide partner of the automotive industry, was facing challenges with its data management. The company generates vast quantities of new data every day, with 45,000 active items, 900 active customers, and approximately 20,000 orders per month. To evaluate this data, the company needed a powerful analysis tool that would allow ad-hoc analyses of its extensive data inventory while conserving employee resources. Previously, only a few specially-trained Hella experts had suitable programming skills to evaluate the business data stored in the DB2 and Oracle databases. Several employees were busy almost full-time programming queries and manually processing the results in Excel or Access. The multitude of different tools and the high percentage of manual work meant that errors were inevitable.

HEROtsc, a leading Business Process Outsourcing company in the UK, was facing challenges in managing large volumes of data spread over 10 different UK offices. The company needed to radically overhaul the way its data was used to add value to both their clients and their own business. They were looking for an efficient and cost-effective way of uniting, presenting, and communicating complex business data throughout the enterprise without the wide range of challenges associated with manual collation using Excel spreadsheets.

iSi North America, a multi-national provider of specialty pressure cylinders for industrial and consumer applications, was facing several challenges. The company was data-rich but information-poor. Sales analysis was a tedious, time-consuming process, and the company was losing money on unprofitable customers and products. The company lacked a clear view of the profitability of specific customers or products, and the burden of report generation was heavy on the small, stressed IT staff. The company made a significant investment in Lawson’s M3 or Movex ERP system, but still found itself struggling with data analysis.

Istobal, a leader in the car, automobile, lorry and bus washing tools sector, was facing a need for Business Intelligence (BI) tools for fast, agile, and easy tracking and better controls. The company was in the midst of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) migration project, which made the need for a BI tool even more necessary. The company needed a tool that could integrate with databases from different systems and some Excel flat files, and that was easy to use and develop. The company was also looking for a tool that could provide better and more efficient information analysis to drive decision-making.

Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT) is an international group of risk specialists and employee benefits consultants. The firm wanted to give its global executives access to real-time information on mobile devices to help them deliver great customer service. However, JLT needed to replace its existing business intelligence (BI) infrastructure and move away from its labour-intensive approach to business discovery. The company had a large data warehouse, but all of the analytics were pretty much after the event. Internal analysis at JLT took time and there was uncertainty about the accuracy of the findings. It led people to question what they were seeing. JLT wanted to adopt a more intuitive, real-time, graphical solution that better suited its global dynamic workforce and commitment to business transformation.

KG Knutsson, a large family-owned company in Sweden, was facing challenges with its business performance due to lack of clear understanding of information in its Movex system. The lack of visibility was driving up inventory costs and undermining accounts receivable management. The company was spending too much time and energy to create reports. They needed a better control and an overview of the information in its Movex ERP system. They evaluated a number of different tools and chose QlikView.

La Mancha Resources Australia, a gold mining company, was facing several challenges. The month-end and year-end reporting process was time-consuming, and there was little transparency on the allocation of costs. Some departments were not fully utilizing the existing systems. The company had implemented an ERP system in 2009 to track and report on company data. However, they wanted to leverage their data to enable decision-making through reporting and analytics. They began evaluating several data extraction and reporting tools.

Lannoo Group Publishers, a publishing house specializing in non-fiction books and stationery, was facing challenges in data collection, analysis, and report generation. The existing Baan ERP system was slow and produced very basic reports that often raised new questions. To answer these questions, a programmer had to be called in each time, which was not efficient. The Oracle database contained seventeen gigabytes of data and it took the system at least fifteen minutes to produce statistics for any given year. The company was looking for a Business Intelligence (BI) package that could provide more insight into sales, customer, and item information.

Magasin, a retail company based in Denmark, was facing a significant challenge in managing its enormous product flow, which included approximately 70,000 part numbers. The company needed to optimize this flow from procurement to stocks and manage the ongoing sale from minute to minute in the separate departments. The company was in search of a Business Intelligence (BI) solution that could provide an overview of the key figures in the company’s logistics department.

Nacka Municipality, a government entity located east of Stockholm, Sweden, was facing several challenges. The municipality was grappling with high costs associated with purchasing standards noncompliance, which was difficult to police. Controllers were spending too much time on manual data collection and analysis. The IT staff was also burdened with the task of generating ad-hoc reports from the IFS ERP system. The municipality needed a solution that could help them analyze the data within their ERP system and provide detailed, timely follow-up capability.

The North West NHS Collaborative Procurement Hub (NWCPH) was faced with the challenge of achieving a standard approach to collate and consolidate data from multiple financial and purchasing systems and turn it into useful management information. The Hub needed to automatically pull together, format and present financial data from many applications throughout its 38 separate Trust sponsor bodies managing more than €1.5 billion in annual spend. Previously, all financial data was handled manually. The process was undertaken annually for the primary reports for the North West Collaboration Hub, and on an ad-hoc basis by the Hub’s category managers when they needed any specific information. At best, this all took several weeks, and by the time all the data was in, it was usually out of date.

CSG Het Noordik, a broad-based combined school in the Netherlands, was looking to introduce a management information platform to support its quality assurance program. The school had a reputation for being good, but it lacked a system to measure and quantify its performance. The school's approach to educational quality and quality assurance was reactive, which is common in the educational sector due to the focus on the primary process of teaching. The school wanted to implement a quality assurance system that was proactive rather than reactive. They wanted to transform data into steering information for fast and effective action. For example, statistical data plays a crucial role during discussions with individual teachers, chain partners, and the education authority.

Nolte-Möbel, one of the largest manufacturers of cabinets and bedroom furniture in Germany, faced the challenge of coordinating company processes for just-in-time production. The company needed to achieve greater transparency for all employees and quickly and easily implement modified parameters. They had mountains of statistics compiled in endless paper lists, but usually, only one page of each list was actually important. To stem this flood of information and provide greater transparency for users, a suitable analytical tool was sought. One of the main requirements was to be able to quickly and easily implement modified parameters since customers (furniture stores) frequently change their affiliation throughout the year. A traditional OLAP solution would require the continuous creation of new cubes, which not only takes time, but important data can also be lost.

Orthomedics, a leading importer and distributor of medical products in South Africa, was facing challenges with its existing ERP system. The system was successful in storing information but lacked high-performance data analysis tools. This resulted in managers spending more time sorting out IT issues rather than analyzing the data. Other problems included the time taken to retrieve the information and distribute reports. With a national footprint, the timely distribution of accurate information was critical. The company had reached a point where it needed to generate over 150 sales analysis reports to cover various requirements.

Panasonic Netherlands was in need of an easy-to-use management reporting system that could be used in conjunction with their ERP system. The existing system was cumbersome and time-consuming, requiring a significant amount of effort to extract, organize, and present information. Additionally, the system did not provide on-screen information, resulting in a large amount of paper waste. The company's managers also needed on-demand information to respond adequately to the market and make informed decisions. The existing tools were not sufficient for these needs, prompting the search for a professional Business Intelligence (BI) solution.

Pernod Ricard España, a leader in the liquor market in Spain, was facing challenges in generating flexible and dynamic reports due to the large amount of data handled by the company. The company needed a tool that could integrate multiple data sources in different formats and make them readily available to directors and department heads to streamline the decision-making process. This needed to be done independently of the IT department, so that end-users would be able to handle their own queries and reports.

Ramkrishna Forgings Limited (RKFL), a leading manufacturer and supplier of open and closed die forgings, was facing challenges in improving the performance and efficiency of large-scale data analysis and integrating data from multiple sources effectively. The company had implemented SAP in 2010 to enhance operational philosophy. However, after two years of using the SAP infrastructure, the IT team at RKFL felt that the tools reporting and analytics lacked flexibility and performance to deal with large data volumes from SAP and other non-SAP data sources. Managers used to pull together SAP-reports and analysis using Microsoft Excel, often resulting in inconsistent and incomplete reports. The organization wanted a solution that would be intuitive and simple to use, integrate with the existing SAP applications, deliver deep data analysis capabilities in real-time, and could be accessed anytime using popular mobile devices.

Rexam Beverage Can Europe & Asia, the largest can manufacturer in Europe, faced a significant challenge in extracting business data from SAP and other data sources to create ad hoc reports. The company's executives needed to highlight key accounts and drill down into products, countries, and sales offices. The main business challenge was that Rexam had huge business value locked into its data sources but lacked a set of applications to extract it to solve business issues immediately. Reports could take one person five working days to compile which often caused issues for executives working to tight deadlines. The company needed a user-friendly business intelligence (BI) tool to avoid the need for users to download huge quantities of data to produce Excel spreadsheets over which managers had little control.

Robinsons Group, a leading upscale retailer operating 18 retail stores in Singapore and Malaysia, faced several challenges. They needed to reduce paper reporting to speed operational decisions and actions at the store level. They also needed to implement an easy-to-use business intelligence system that employees could use effectively with very little training. Furthermore, they wanted to develop at-a-glance digital views of business and operational performance. The company was looking for a solution that could provide faster access to more actionable data leading to smarter, timelier decisions. They also wanted to decrease their reliance on clumsy paper reports and increase efficiency when working with data, creating reports, and sharing information.

RS Components, as part of the global Electrocomponents PLC group, operates over a large geographical footprint. With the components business being fiercely competitive, the management team considered it mission-critical to be able to make business decisions swiftly. However, their existing decision support system was achieved through the manual consolidation of data directly from their ERP and CRM application systems (JD Edwards and Pivotal). This meant that they were spending too much time on data consolidation before any analysis could be made, delaying important decisions as a result. To tackle this, RS Components realized it needed a management tool or system that could provide strategic insights on the performance of its business across all functions. The system should be able to provide data for their Key Performance Matrixes, and assist management with their strategic discussions thereby improving their decision-making process. In order to achieve this, this system should be able extract data from multiple robust and complex systems spread across a diversed geographical region to provide a common view of the business which everyone in the company could rely on.

sahibinden.com, Turkey’s largest e-trade platform, was facing challenges in managing high volume data and reducing the time taken for queries. The company needed a solution that could manage data control and calculations from a single centre and could be deployed quickly and cost-effectively. The company was looking for a business intelligence (BI) solution that could provide detailed analyses, such as visitors’ activities, options, and preferences, to make the website more efficient and profitable.

Sathya Agencies, a fast-growing electronics retailer with over 33 stores in Tamil Nadu, India, was facing several challenges. The company was experiencing duplication in reporting and delayed response times across departments due to the use of SAP B1 ERP for their operations and the development of numerous custom reports to meet every department’s needs. This led to duplication of information and delayed responses. The company also lacked visibility into excess and non-performing stock at all times, which caused logistic issues. There was also a lack of access to a variety of information required for effective sales campaign executions. Furthermore, the lack of mobile access to information for travelling senior management was a significant challenge.

SIBA, a leading home electronics retailer in the Nordics, was facing challenges in increasing efficiency in compiling accounting reports across stores. The company was struggling with the usefulness of the information locked in hand-compiled binders and was looking for ways to enhance information sharing across all retail store locations. Every month, SIBA had to compile the accounts for every store within the SIBA group manually. Accounts were put together at each store, forwarded to headquarters, and then compiled into a binder. With 53 electronic department stores as part of the group, this resulted in a large number of binders. The work with the accounts every month was time-consuming and the results were poor. Despite the investment in labor to compile monthly data, there was little to show for the effort.

Sibley Heart Center Cardiology, one of the largest pediatric cardiology practices in the U.S., was facing challenges in managing and analyzing its vast database of patient records. The practice was considering hiring an additional full-time person to handle reporting requests for its leadership team. Standard end-of-month reporting took a few days, while ad hoc requests from senior management and physicians took up to a week or more to fulfill. The reports and hard-coded structure of Sibley’s systems couldn’t deliver basic analysis. A person would have to make several queries, which alone would take hours to generate, export data to Microsoft Excel and “reverse engineer” an answer. This limitation led to a situation where Sibley staff would not ask many questions due to the difficulty in obtaining data.

Slingeland Ziekenhuis, a Dutch short-stay hospital, was facing challenges due to drastic changes in the healthcare sector. The partial privatisation of the hospital market required hospitals to determine the total cost of medical treatment. Additionally, hospitals were gradually losing their fixed compensation for running their facilities. Slingeland Ziekenhuis decided to restructure its internal organisation to better respond to these changing market conditions. However, the hospital's standalone reporting system was inadequate for managing the reorganised hospital through KPI measurements. The hospital needed an end-to-end management information system that could quickly answer ad hoc management questions and adequately respond to new market developments.

Stichting Studielink, a joint venture between colleges and universities, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Cultural Affairs and Science, the HBO-Raad (Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences), VSNU (Association of Universities in the Netherlands) and DUO (Education Executive Agency), was faced with the challenge of introducing a management information platform for the sector-wide registration process for colleges and universities. The changes in the form and content of education, in students’ approaches to their studies and in regulations from the government all demanded ongoing innovation within higher education. Studielink encourages this innovation through collaboration and standardization, all the while preserving the autonomy of the individual institutions. An example of promoting collaboration through innovation is the standardization of the registration process for higher education students, involving some 650,000 registrations annually.

Superior Graphite, a chemical manufacturer specializing in high-temperature technologies, advanced sizing, blending, and coating technologies, was facing challenges in developing data dashboards that would enable better decision-making at all levels. The company wanted to reduce the development costs of integrating a quality business intelligence software system and enhance the richness, accuracy, and usability of corporate data and corresponding data analysis. The company had previously spent a significant amount on consulting time, hardware, and software, but the project dragged on without any results. The company needed a solution that could provide fast access to in-depth data and analysis to improve response time, forecasting, and decision making.

Swedbank, one of the largest financial institutions in Scandinavia and the Baltic states, needed to better support its 6,000+ branch employees and specialist head office and regionally-based marketing staff with customer-centric tools. The mission was to improve the sales support and give advisors an easy way to plan which customers to meet. The previous sales support tools were too complicated for most of the branch office users who were dependent on central and regional specialists from whom information could be ordered. The lack of system agility meant that opportunities were often missed. Swedbank saw this challenge as an opportunity for a paradigm shift. They saw potential for an entirely new user friendly and flexible system that put information, and thereby power, at everyone’s fingertips. They wanted to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and at the same time grow sales and revenue.

Teck Cominco Limited, a diversified mining company, needed a platform for turning large volumes of transactional data into usable business information. The company's ERP solution met all of management’s data capture requirements, but its cumbersome reporting capabilities proved inhibitive to providing the key performance indicator (KPI) information necessary for quickly recognizing trends and driving improvements. Temporary, Excel-based systems were implemented to deliver KPI data to management. These unsustainable, labor-intensive systems required IT managers to dedicate one day per month to prepare and distribute reports for process capability and maintenance KPI reviews. The reports provided only static views of information with a narrow focus on a single topic from a single subject area. Access to and value of overall information needed to be significantly and quickly improved.

tesa tape, a leading manufacturer and distributor of pressure-sensitive adhesive tapes, was facing challenges in improving data accessibility to its Asia-Pacific subsidiaries and affiliates. The company wanted to enhance the usability of business data by integrating flexible, high-powered, multifunctional analysis tools. They also aimed to reduce the time and manpower required to develop practical, visual reports. The company had implemented a Navision ERP system, which provided new opportunities for automating information. However, the visual capabilities of the ERP system were limited, and the company was looking for a solution that could provide better visual reporting.