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Groceries wholesaler Okle relies on QlikView and maxess for analysis of business data
Seeking a means to evaluate its business data quickly and purposefully, Okle decided on introduction of the QlikView business intelligence tool. Implementation was performed by maxess systemhaus GmbH; as a QlikTech elite partner has extensive experience and the company has already successfully carried out numerous projects in the trade.
The Okle GmbH wholesale trade headquarters with head office in Singen is today one of the largest independent distributors of groceries and everyday requirements in Baden-Württemberg. Okle currently employs around 250 with annual revenue of more than €100 million. Approximately 500 independent retailers are regularly supplied with about 10,000 articles including in-house meats and sausage production. As a full range supplier, Okle offers an outstanding range and quality through these retailers as well as REWE supermarkets and specialist shops, something a little special, supplemented by services for all partners.
Project goal and first steps
There was an abundance of data in the existing systems, analysis of which was often difficult requiring high programming outlays. To be able in the future to better evaluate and process the data as well as structure by department dependent requests, Okle searched for a BI tool which due to the inhomogeneous system environments could unite the data from different systems in a single user interface without programming outlay.
After detailed testing of various BI tools, Okle decided on the introduction of QlikView with the project partner maxess systemhaus GmbH. Required was fast and improved data analysis from different operative systems, however primarily the Okle GmbH ERP system, based on a database hosted on an AS400 (IBM i-series).
With QlikView, the attempt was made to access the data pool of the AS400 over ODBC. The difficulty of the first steps lay especially in the fact that the maxess staff did not know the table structure of the Okle system, and in reverse QlikView was unknown as an evaluation tool at Okle. Nevertheless, within an initial 3-day training workshop and only on the basis of the information delivered by Okle, the first application was able to be jointly generated, and its results verified on the basis of the available analyses.
QlikView fields of application
On customer request maxess generated several reports for ascertainment of sales turnover, margin and gross income. Besides visualization of the values for the entire enterprise, these applications also enable clear display of the branch data and field reps per article and goods group. Temporal data filtering is by week, month and year, with respective comparison possibilities to past periods. A comparison with the projected data is also possible on customer group level.
Besides sales, new reporting was developed primarily for the logistics, category management and production.
For logistics, besides KPIs such as picking performance or moved volumes, analyses of delivery quotas, transport aids and empties movements as well as ascertainment of the picking commission are also possible with few clicks.
Category management staff can, besides turnover per goods group, per article and per supplier, also easily determine the turnover for particular article groups (e.g. organic, regional). The TOP 10 analysis evaluation reports are displayed by means of an assortment analysis report. A detailed analysis of customer claims as well as sales of the REWE supermarkets is also possible.
For fresh and preserved meats production a report is generated which both accesses the production planning system and can be verified using the production calculation.
In the future existing reports will be further expanded and refined. A dashboard per customer and supplier is also planned, uniting data from different reports. Furthermore, work on an article contribution margin calculation is in progress on the basis of the article account.
Résumé:
“We are very satisfied with the decision for QlikView,” says Reiner Sailer, technology manager. “QlikView allows better and faster implementation of analyses. Previously fixed, one-dimensional report forms have been replaced by analyses offering a high measure of convenience and transparency within the data pools for the examiner through different presentation perspectives. Collaboration with maxess has also been functioning very well; the analyses are always implemented according to our requirements, and improvement suggestions from the maxess colleagues have always helped us in further development, and maxess is always available with fast response times should we have problems building new reports independently.”