Traditionally, businesses across the globe made decisions based on historical information. With a lack of access to current data, crucial choices were made according to a “hunch”, a “gut-feel” and what happened in the business 30 days ago or more. Thanks to modern analytics and a revolutionised approach to business intelligence (BI), today’s businesses are afforded the opportunity to make decisions based on the analysis of real-time data, making the business more proactive and transparent.
Offering itself as a real-world example Signal Hill Products admits that, before implementing Qlik Sense, it operated without any formal reporting in place. “As a company in the craft beer industry breaking into the premium beer industry, we are growing at a blinding pace,” confirms Hester Swart, Business Analyst at Signal Hill Products. “Without data, crucial decisions could not be made accurately, leading to costly errors.”
In the past, business data was managed using Excel Sheets. “These sheets were over 100MB in size and contained an enormous amount of information, which made it difficult to navigate specific challenges,” adds Marcus van Staden, Sales & Systems Analyst at Signal Hill Products.
Seeking a solution to better match growth and overcome the above-mentioned challenges, Signal Hill Products began investigating relevant software in March 2018. Following an intensive comparative analysis considering cost, implementation time, functionality, support, training, scalability, and user-friendliness, the company implemented Qlik Sense in June 2018, through South Africa Qlik Master Reseller.
According to Swart, the implementation of the solution went incredibly smoothly. “We went from getting the licenses to being operational in about five days.” Van Staden agrees; “The implementation was very straightforward. All the data was there, so it was a ‘plug and play’ scenario, with excellent support from the SA Qlik team.”
Swart confirms that; “The company now has daily and monthly reports being shared and used for informed decision making.” She adds that the front-end setup of the platform, the user side, is much easier to work with and creates valuable data analysis. “In the past, decisions were largely informed by history – and real-time insights and responses were very limited. Now we’re actually making decisions based on real analysis of data, resulting in proactivity and transparency. This makes us a lot more agile and able to respond to demand faster. We’re operating proactively instead of being reactive.”
With real-time information, powered by modern solutions that embrace digital transformation, businesses are empowered to make better decisions, gain more insight to consumer needs, and set more realistic targets based on real information. Add to this accurate performance and sales tracking, enhanced asset ROI and structured planning on a detailed level, and the effect on the bottom line can only be positive.
“Qlik Sense has had a massive impact on our management. It broke open our company and showed us where we are winning, where we are losing, and why,” concludes Van Staden.
This column was submitted by Issued by Perfect Word Consulting (Pty) Ltd
