Paper Plus Case Study

Paper Plus Group gains insight into their business with Qlik®

As New Zealand’s largest retailer of books, stationery, magazines and cards, with 115 stores nationwide, for Paper Plus Group Ltd, it is imperative that their support office has access to up-to-date and accurate information on what is happening in stores to enable efficient delivery of products customers want, ensure promotions are meeting customer demands and overall profitability of the retail chain in today’s challenging retail environment.

The implementation of Qlik has empowered Paper Plus Group for continued success. With increasing competition, retailers need to continuously differentiate to encourage their customer base to choose them over others. Making those decisions on which products, promos and loyalty programs will work is all driven by information. Information which prior to implementing Qlik, was time consuming, inflexible, unreliable and difficult to access.

The previous manual reporting relied heavily on Excel and manpower to extract data from SQL and create daily reports, which were frequently inaccurate. Now the business has flexible analysis, enabling monitoring of promos, better management of stock sell through and overall improvement in the category managers abilities to make effective decisions on what is working in store.

Daily sales reports are now automatically generated and shared with key users and managers. Exception reports and analysis has meant store owners can be more responsive and proactive about finding ways to reduce loss and increase sales and margins.

Qlik has equipped category owners to make better decisions with information at their finger tips to enable negotiations with suppliers based on actual true data. One version of the truth means everyone is on the same page and there are no mixed messages from the data affecting the direction of the business. Category managers can focus on their core tasks instead of spending time just trying to access information.

Implementing Qlik has been a “transformative” experience, according to CEO Sam Shosanya and has become ingrained into everything they do daily. They now have “total insight” to their business and confidence in their data. When asked to compare the way the business operates with Qlik versus prior, Paper Plus Group advise it is like “day vs night”. The team no longer have to make decisions based on ‘gut-feel’ but on proven analysis.

Visual Intelligence’s expertise in both Qlik solutions and understanding their business has given Paper Plus Group confidence in the recommendations and ongoing expansion of delivering further functionality to the business. According to their Project Manager, Visual Intelligence is more than just a support company, they are truly a part of the Paper Plus team, providing extremely responsive service, honest feedback and valued recommendations.

As they continue to mature in their Qlik usage, Paper Plus are now even able to provide relevant data to their key suppliers, and are also rolling dynamic dashboards and analytics out to Stores. The ease of use of the tool combined with the value of the information has meant it is a fantastic solution for helping Store owners become more efficient and increase profits.

The successful roll out of Qlik and ongoing business efficiencies gained as a result is a testament to the quality of the relationship between the Paper Plus group and Visual Intelligence.

Our Customers

Our Customers

Here are some of our satisfied customers:

Häfele

Häfele (N.Z.)

Häfele (N.Z) deploys QlikView

CHALLENGE

With more than 20,000 different products and 6000 customers, Häfele needed a comprehensive solution to monitor sales performance.

SOLUTION

The data is extracted from Häfele's sales system into QlikView. Not only will each sales rep be able to analyse sales information but he will also be able to see the complete sales history down to invoice level. Another added advantage is that the available sales history is now much bigger than it used to be.

BENEFITS

Detailed Target Followup on sales rep level, Powerful performance analysis down to invoice level, Instant information access and reporting for sales people and Sales reps can analyse off line - on the road

Häfele is a highly-regarded partner to building planners, to the woodworking industry, to the joinery and related trades, and to property developers. Its comprehensive hardware technology supply range includes: Furniture fittings, architectural hardware and the electronic locking system Dialock.

With more than 20,000 products and 6,000 customers Häfele needed a better way to control and monitor product performance as well as giving their sales reps a better view of their own performance.

Soon after the initial QlikView application was launched Häfele's management team realised just how easy reporting and analysis can be. New ideas started to pop up almost immediately.

- How to help Sales Reps identify inactive customers in certain areas
- Identify customers that suddenly stop buying a certain product
- Identify sales where the margin was too low.

Quick solutions driven by need

With such a large number of different products it used to be difficult to get early warnings of when a customer that used to buy a certain product suddenly didn't buy that product anymore or if the sold quantity dropped significantly. Before this could only be achieved by manually looking at each customer and then looking at the individual products that they used to buy over the last year. Once the need was identified it was only a matter of hours before the solution was implemented with QlikView.

When a sales representative travels to a region he needs a lot of information about existing customers. Apart from the normal sales statistics where he can performance on regional, product and customer level, he can also compare similar customers. Another need that was identified was to list customers that have not been active during a certain period. This could be a potential source of extra sales if the sales representative calls in when travelling to a region. With QlikView the sales rep will have the information he needs within a few seconds.

Ivoclar Vivadent

Ivoclar Vivadent

Ivoclar Vivadent, a dentistry sales and marketing company are familiar with precision ‘tools of the trade’. But with 18,000 stock codes to handle they needed a very high performing set of business tools themselves. Well up to the task of keeping track of every item is Greentree’s Inventory Management module paired with QlikView. This arguably provides the most intelligent inventory management and sales data analysis & reporting solution available.

CHALLENGE

Ivoclar needed a robust Inventory Management and Sales Analysis capability well beyond the three levels of data their previous system allowed them to view.

SOLUTION

Greentree Inventory and several other integrated modules plus QlikView for Greentree.

RESULTS

Ivoclar have achieved improvements in customer service levels through more efficient sales ordering systems. This is a direct result of being able to maintain optimal levels of and investment in inventory through better sales analysis and reporting.

ABOUT IVOCLAR VIVADENT GROUP

What began in Zurich over 80 years ago with the production of artificial ceramic teeth has evolved into a leading international company with a comprehensive product portfolio.

Ivoclar Vivadent AG is an innovative enterprise with one of the largest Research & Development centers in the dental industry. Global orientation, local presence - as a global player, the company is present in almost all the markets in the world with its own subsidiaries in 19 countries.

Europe and North America are the core markets of the privately-owned enterprise, but increased attention will be given to Asia and Latin America in the future, so that people around the world can benefit from the developments of modern dental medicine..

For more information visit Ivoclar Vivadent

As a sales-driven operation with many inventory items and over 200 orders being dispatched everyday “three levels of sales data was too shallow” says Fiona Ludemann, Office Manager at Ivoclar Vivadent. Since Inventory Management and Sales Analysis are core business activities the need to maintain and manage optimal levels of inventory and have the necessary tools to analyse sales data as far back and as deeply as they wanted to go was a key driver in the decision to implement Greentree overlaid with QlikView.

Although other competing products were considered during the evaluation process it became clear during demonstrations that QlikView for Greentree was the simpler and more cost efficient option. The local Greentree partner Verde Group Ltd and Visual Intelligence who customized and integrated the system proved they could provide the best support with a deep and clear understanding of Ivoclar’s relatively complex inventory management and sales analysis needs.

 

Analysis that makes you smile

Like a lot of businesses Ivoclar Vivadent had a need for a greater depth of analysis, Ludemann points out they needed to see well beyond three levels of data. The company values its close relationships with all their customers so the need to accurately record, manage and measure each account is paramount. Staff needed to view and analyse large amounts of historical data which the previous system would not allow. Plus, the more traditional database enquiry usually requires the time-consuming creation of complex SQL queries along with significant ‘re-organization or grooming’ of the data before anyone can find out any thing - this is not the case using Greentree and QlikView. QlikView is an advanced analysis tool with integrated dashboards which sits on top of Greentree enabling sales staff at Ivoclar to quickly and easily analyse all aspects of the company data down to transaction level and create dynamic queries on the fly. QlikView extracts the data directly from Greentree but also from external data sources such as monthly budgets figures that are currently stored in Excel. Staff can define exactly how they want data in reports to look and have the option of displaying the information dynamically on an individual’s screen or sharing reports with other users over the internet. Despite the fact that internationally, the Ivoclar Vivadent group of independent companies is using different systems exchanging information is easy using Excel.

Information Rich

Greentree’s ODBC and Excel integration combined with QlikView to create a ‘plug ‘n play’ sales analysis and reporting environment. Fiona Ludemann is clear on the view that QlikView for Greentree has enabled Ivoclar to become “information rich” by accumulating data that empowers the business to another level. Ludemann enthusiastically conveys the value of using Greentree and QlikView in terms of time savings, the depth and breath of data analysis Ivoclar can go to plus the simplicity of query creation and dynamic display and she says that “most staff need little training to use QlikView for Greentree, it’s a familiar window’s-based environment“

For a sales focused organization like Ivoclar profitability will only ever be as good as the businesses ability to glean strategic information from sales data and use it to make timely and accurate business decisions which positively impact the bottom-line. The signs are that this is where Greentree and QlikView should prove to have a long-term positive impact on the business.

As is the case in any sales and marketing operation the Sales Manager must be able to see which inventory items were slow movers, which items the sales people were selling the most of, which sales person is ahead of budget or needing a little ‘encouragement’ and which items need a greater sales effort. Ivoclar have been able to achieve higher levels of customer service improvement and more efficient management of and investment in inventory as a result of getting answers to strategic business questions put to Greentree through QlikView’s sales analysis and reporting capability.

Having found an empowering business solution in QlikView for Greentree, Ivoclar Vivadent expect the integrated modules at their disposal to benefit them for many years ahead.

Applico

Applico Group Ltd

New Zealand's leading importer of premium kitchen appliances goes for QlikView and Visual Intelligence Ltd

CHALLENGE

With more than 16,000 different products, Applico wasn't able to get the reporting they needed with Chrystal Reports. Pre-defined paper printouts simply was not enough. Applico needed detailed information about sales and purchasing and stock control that could not be obtained with the existing system.

SOLUTION

One QlikView main sales and purchasing application handles most of the reporting requirements for Applico. But since Visual Intelligence Ltd helped Applico setup their first QlikView application back in 2003 the usage has spread across the business to more than 14 different applications.

BENEFITS

Detailed Target Followup on sales rep level, Powerful performance analysis down to invoice level, Instant information access and reporting for sales people and Sales reps can analyse off line - on the road

Applico Group Ltd is the leading importer of premium kitchen appliances into New Zealand sourced from throughout the world. Specifically, Smeg, Baumatic and Classique from Italy, St George from Australia and Viking from the USA.

Advanced Logistics Planning

The majority of Applico’s products are being imported from the other side of the world. Shipping times for most products are 5 weeks or more making re-stocking and stock optimisation a major concern. Warranty obligations also require Applico to always ensure that spare parts are readily available. The sheer number of different products and spare parts make this a highly complex task. 

One of Applico’s QlikView applications takes care of this complex task combining input from the ERP system and various other sources, giving instant feedback to the logistics manager. This information is the base for purchase ordering keeping the stock on hand at an optimum level at all times.

Warranty Analysis 

QlikView gathers data from a separate warranty database that logs all warranty claims and compares the data with current sales and purchase information enabling advanced Analysis that gives Applico early warnings if any products should have a higher than normal fault rate. 

Elizabeth Arden (NZ)

Elizabeth Arden (NZ)

Prestige beauty company, Elizabeth Arden NZ, have revolutionised the way they access and utilise their business data since implementing QlikView with Visual Intelligence Ltd.

Elizabeth Arden (NZ) has immediate access to key sales information with QlikView

As a sales and marketing organisation in a very competitive consumer-driven industry, Elizabeth Arden NZ needed to have immediate visibility of key drivers in their business. The extraction of data using traditional cube-based software not only for internal analysis but in particular for reporting to their international corporate head office was extremely time consuming and inefficient. It would often take weeks just to extract and format the data required, meaning ready access to reporting was restricted to a couple of individuals within the business. What information they did have was also very limited with no expansion capabilities making regular performance reporting problematic.

Due to these inefficiencies, it was difficult for Elizabeth Arden NZ to implement improvement initiatives in key areas such as gross margin which are integral for improving profitability. But things are different now that they have QlikView.

The implementation of QlikView has provided users with instant data access, company-wide, providing the business users with simple but comprehensive reports and analysis. According to CFO, Tony Goddard, their business life with QlikView compared to their previous experience is like “day versus night.”

“We now have immediate access to key sales information and transparency throughout our organisation and distribution network. QlikView provides us with the big picture of our business operations at our finger tips in one easy-to-use software application. The very expansive functionality developed by Visual Intelligence was obviously designed to help our business get immediate value out of QlikView and that has certainly been the case for us.”

“What’s more is that the more I use QlikView, the more I think of ways and areas in which we can use QlikView to answer questions about the business to help us improve efficiency.”

According to Mr Goddard, he would “absolutely recommend Visual Intelligence” as their QlikView partner. “They are a team of people with an excellent understanding of which drivers are integral to running a successful business. I have complete confidence they will understand our needs and continue to deliver what we require as we expand our QlikView usage. Their support and training has also been prompt and very easy to follow.”

 

About Elizabeth Arden NZ

Elizabeth Arden is a global beauty company with a rich heritage and brand equity that maintains a strong connection with the consumer by staying modern and relevant. By offering a portfolio of high quality products and services with a focus on innovation in skincare, colour trends and a complete range of fragrances, Elizabeth Arden caters to the total beauty needs of women around the world.

Elizabeth Arden New Zealand is run out of offices in Newmarket and the General Manager is Valerie Riley. All products are now imported from the Roanoke factory in the United States and are distributed through 130 stockists New Zealand-wide.

After 85 years of history in New Zealand, Elizabeth Arden continues to move from strength to strength, balancing the art of maintaining the traditions espoused by Miss Arden, while looking to the innovations of the future.