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Case Studies

Most Recent Case Study

Retail booksellers write new chapter with iQ4bis. A&R Whitcoulls is leading bookseller in Australasia with four divisions – the Whitcoulls Group, Angus & Robertson, the Calendar Club and the Travel Stores in Australia, NZ and Hong Kong. The Whitcoulls and A&R (Angus & Robertson) brands are well-established in their respective markets and have histories dating back over one hundred years. With the combined businesses using SAP for Retail, there was a vast store of key information that could be a valuable business resource for planning and analysis. But extracting that information was not easy. “We had all of this detailed data that had been captured via SAP for Retail,” says Maureen Maloy, Manager of the Systems Support Group (SSG) for A&R Whitcoulls Group,“yet RIS was both too slow and too infl exible to provide us with the type of dynamic reporting that we needed for any sort of analysis or meaningful comparisons.” After a review of the different Business Intelligence solutions, A&R Whitcoulls selected iQ4bis. “What really made iQ4bis stand out from the others,” says Maloy, “was their ‘Proof of Concept’ demonstration. They showed us how iQ4bis would work with our own data. And because they were able to organise the Proof of Concept so quickly, we were comfortable that we would be able to implement iQ4bis enterprise-wide in a timely manner.” “We especially liked the way that iQ4bis depicted the data,” continues Maloy. “The linked four quadrant views were impressive and contributed to our decision. We needed to build cubes around individual data types and dynamically link them together for multi-dimensional analyses. iQ4bis allowed us to do exactly that quickly and easily.”

Case Studies

iQ4bis and Ampacet Case Study

Ampacet Corporation spans the globe with 12 manufacturing sites on four continents. Managing business intelligence and reporting fo such a global enterprise is challenging, especially with reports from different facilities coming in different formats, at different times, containing different data. The CEO of the company wanted a global view of the business data from their JD Edwards ERP and multiple other systems. Ampacet found iQ4bis, a BI solution optimized to run in conjunction with JD Edwards and other data resources. "I can monitor inventory in Thailand, track production in Texas, and look at sales by territory from our sales reps in British Columbia," says John Smith, Business Intelligence Data Warehousing Manager. "With iQ4bis, we have a global view of our operations."

iQ4bis and Bell Tea Case Study

The Bell Tea Company is the market leader in the New Zealand tea industry. To keep that position, Bell Tea implemented Microsoft® Dynamics™ AX ERP platform. “We had just replaced and upgraded our servers and network,” says Financial Controller David McKeown. “We were happy with the speed and flexible database management capabilities that Dynamics AX provided, but it was still a challenge for our managers to quickly and easily get the information they needed.” “At a local iQ4bis User Group meeting,” McKeown says, “I met other people who were using iQ4bis. They confirmed that iQ4bis could provide everything we needed at a price we could afford.”

iQ4bis and Burger King Case Study

Burger King NZ has more than 65 resutaurants in New Zealand and conitinues to expand and develop restaurants every year. With this type of expansion and consolidation in an extremely fast-moving business, management need to keep their thumbs on the puls of the business. With their original paper-based system, they simply couldn't keep up. They wanted to reduce the amount of time they spent preparing analyses and printing reports. The iQ4bis business intelligence solution addressed Burger King's needs with their easy-to-use analytics, charting and reporting system. Buger King NZ saved $500,000 within the first 12 months on reduced wastage. "The iQ4bis softwared did eveyrhing we wanted," said Zane Devey, IT Manager. "iQ4bis was the best solution for saving us time and money."

iQ4bis and Charles Parsons Group Case Study

The Charles Parsons Group is a privately owned group of textile distribution and converting businesses supplying a diverse customer base throughout Asia Pacific. Tracking and reporting sales across a network of nearly 30 related but geographically dispersed businesses was challenging at best. Difficult, ineffecient information extraction from their MOVEX ERP system, and slow, labor intensive, inflexible reporting methods were a huge issue. Charles Parsons relied upon iQ4bis to provide them with an enhanced sales analysis, budgeting, forecasting and financial analysis process that was rapidly deployed and affordable. With iQ4bis, Charles Parsons has dramatically speeded up their reporting process, users are empowered to analyze data from their desktops and they have a much more efficient leverage of IBM i5-based MOVEX database resources. In addition the IT staff can now easily manage cube and development process.

iQ4bis and Dreyfus Case Study

After a long time "Making Do" with inadequate sales information, Dreyfus hits pay dirt with iQ4bis. "The first thing I do every day is check how sales were on the previous day," says Senior Vice President of Operatoins, Chris O'Connor. Dreyfus selected and implemented iQ4bis business intelligence solution to provide the access and visiblity into its data assets that its existing reporting mechanisms simply could not answer. iQ4bis provides daily reports that allow sales reps to analyze key data, requests for manual reports have significantly decreased and the staff is freed up for other, more important activities.

iQ4bis and EA Sween Case Study

EA Sween Company manufactures and distributes Deli Express, the nation's largest selling brand of retail sandwiches. More than a million sandwiches are sold weekly, from Maine to California. EA Sween's JD Edwards ERP system records more than 17 million individual transactions per year, but wasn't providing the timely, high level view of the business that management needed. After an impressive proof of concept for the EA Sween managment team, the iQ4bis business intelligence solution was install within a week, and by the second week it was completely validate and in use. "Our sales team can generate reports for customers that detail regional sales with just a few clicks of the mouse. Our marketing department tracks product tests and introductions quickly and easily," states Ron Myshka, Vice President Information Services.

iQ4bis and Express Data Case Study

iQ4bis improves the bottom line for Express Data by enabling smarter inventory decisions. The company had plenty of sales, inventory, financial, and CRM data, representing a valuable—but largely untapped—corporate asset. Instead, Express Data managers were forced to rely on “gut feel” to understand key drivers such as the buying patterns of customers. Much of Express Data’s inventory is ordered from offshore, and inventory unsold for longer than 90 days is detrimental to the bottom line. “Our sales people needed tools to help them accurately assess the needs and buying habits of their key customers and targets,” says sales director Ian Jansen. “Having inventory profiles for those customers is critical. We made a strategic decision to invest in a business intelligence solution to give us capabilities to ‘operate smarter’.” “We selected iQ4bis for a number of reasons,” says Jansen. “iQ4bis was optimized to work with our Microsoft SQL Server databases. Additionally, iQ4bis’ ease-of-use meant we could train all of our key staff without taking them offline. After a two-minute introduction, our top level management, sales directors, marketing, and finance people could drive iQ4bis Analysis.” iQ4bis also combines the backend extract, transform, and load (ETL) functions and data warehousing tools, employing Microsoft’s SQL Server and OLAP technology for analysis.

iQ4bis and First Look Studios Case Study

First Look Studios relies on iQ4bis to provide the visibility into sales trends and data.“Our prior system was just too slow for me to respond to changing market conditions,” says Marlys Clay, vice president of Vendor Managed Inventory for First Look Studios. Before iQ4bis, delayed or questionable sales information meant missing manufacturing deadlines, and other problems too.“Using iQ4bis, we’re now able to give our account managers a profile of their account and make them smarter business people when they go in and make that sales call,” says Clay. “The buyers have more respect for you if you know what is going on in their business with your titles.”

iQ4bis and Franke Food Service Case Study

iQ4bis improved productivity, increased customer satisfaction and service for Franke Foodservice Systems. Franke Foods maintains a lot of data. "Making it into actionable information is the challenge. “iQ4bis does that,” says Gonsewski. “Once you have the model, you can make all of this information available throughout your organization, so that line managers can evaluate, analyze, and make decisions based on facts.” “Rollouts [new product introduction and shipment] are a big part of Franke’s business,” says Gonsewski. “With iQ4bis, we move faster on rollouts, and know where we’re overloaded and what orders need to be moved out. Our rollouts can be very fluid—dates move a lot, and as we get better information, we can pull those orders and move them out, notify the customers, keep everyone informed.” Franke’s improved productivity in customer service and sales goes a long way toward keeping customers happier.

iQ4bis and Frucor Case Study

Decision-makers at Frucor depend on iQ4bis for rapid reporting and real-time data visibility. To help Frucor understand the market dynamics when planning for new energy drinks and products, the company relies heavily on business intelligence. “We used Business Objects Crystal Reports to create flat reports and multidimensional views,” says business analyst Mark Palmer. “But there were issues. While those tools worked well for the power users, less sophisticated users were intimidated. Our user community simply found the process confusing,” says Palmer. “We needed a front end multidimensional reporting tool that was easier for our users to use.” “Over a nine month period, we looked at a variety of products from various suppliers in a relatively informal evaluation process,” Palmer says. “The evaluation culminated in Frucor purchasing an iQ4bis enterprise license. We chose iQ4bis because of its ease of use, and because of the web version which addressed issues we had in outlying offices. The system was very wellreceived.”

iQ4bis and Konica Case Study

iQ4bis enabled better business analysis and preserved an ERP system that was slated for replacement. U-Bix Konica Minolta New Zealand sells and services Konica, Minolta, HP, OKI and Brother office equipment for a large customer base. Yet Tony Day, general manager, customer service explains, "Getting information out of our AS/400-based business planner and control software (BPCS) ERP system was a nightmare. For business intelligence and management reporting, it was woefully inaccurate." "Our consultants at Cosyn recommended that we look at iQ4bis," continues Day. We provided them with the raw data from our BPCS system and in less than a week they gave us a full demonstration of iQ4bis with our own data. I immediately saw relationships, trends and patterns that I had no idea existed. I'd been look at this data for years, but when I saw how iQ4bis presented the information, I was sold."

iQ4bis and Kubota Tractor Case Study

Immediate visibility into sales history database empowers managers to perform their own analyses with iQ4bis. Kubota tractor Australia distributes products all over Australia through 190 authorized dealers. Until recently, they were relying mainly on their proprietary ERP application as their data repository and using Microsoft Excel-based pivot tables for generating sales and inventory reports. “We needed visibility into our databases, but our dependence on Excel and pivot tables meant that managers with limited Excel skills couldn’t run reports themselves,” says Paul Barry, Industrial Division Manager at Kubota. “We had to request reports from our IT people. As a result reports were only compiled once a month. We needed to upgrade our capabilities in order to support our growing operations.” Kubota Tractor’s implementation of iQ4bis went very well. “Quickly we started looking at information patterns in iQ4bis’ visual format and drilling down into the underlying data,” says Barry. “We could easily spot suspect data quality, even though our data was extremely accurate and complete, the Extract, Translate and Load process helped us improve data quality even more." "The set-up and support from iQ4bis has been great,” continues Barry. “The work done setting up the cubes was at times lengthy but the iQ4bis consultant did a great job understanding our business. In addition, the level of ongoing support and contact was excellent. iQ4bis has been very professional and proactive in ensuring that we are completely satisfied.”

iQ4bis and Medtronic Case Study

Medtronic deploys iQ4bis across the enterprise to improve sales and inventory forecasting and related processes. Searching for a business intelligence solution to help effectively diagnose sales and inventory issues, Medtronic investigated iQ4is. "We chose iQ4bis as a sales tracking tool to complement our other oslutions," says Senior Project Manager Eva Chow. "iQ4bis had an extremely easy-to-use interface which makes it ideal for nontechnical users. We didn't have a business intelligence grou, and the ability for our staff to perform their own sales analyses was a major plus. iQbis made our life easier from the beginning. Many of our reporting requirements wer met from the outset without customization. Thow that were not were easily customized either by us or by one of the iQ4bis consultants."

iQ4bis and Merck Case Study

Meck Sharpe and Dohme still rely on iQ4bis twelve years later; an early adopter of iQ4bis, they are still satisfied customers. In 1996 iQ4bis was brand new. “We were reluctant to be the first customer of a new IT product,” Craig Laurent IT technical manager at MSD says, “but we were so impressed with the notion that anyone— even upper-level management—could prepare their own analyses, that we decided to implement the system. It’s a decision we’ve never regretted.” Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) is a pharmaceutical products company that develops, manufactures, and markets a wide range of prescription-only medicines for human health conditions. The ERP and SQL databases at MSD warehouse a wide variety of data on key business metrics. “We realized early on that capturing and storing the data was only half the battle,” says Laurent. “We needed to be able to extract data sets, analyze them, and prepare reports for management and sales staff. We had all the data we needed, but turning the data into easily accessible information was difficult.”

iQ4bis and Midwest Case Study

Midwest is a designer and wholesaler of holiday items and giftware. A large, complex organization, lack of visibility into sales trends left Midwes with increasing levels of unsold inventory. With the iQ4bis business intelligence solution Midwest has visibilty into the data of their JD Edwards OneWorld ERP system, and has the right analytics and reporting to decrease their E&O inventory. "In the last year, E&O has been down dramatically. iQ4bis was very instrumental in that success and I don't think we would would have been successful with our initiatives if it weren't for the visibility provide by iQ4bis," says Fred Berndt, Manager of Sales Analysis and Financial Planning. "Looking at key performance indicators on a regular basis lets us deal with situations as they happen, instead of finding out months too late theat we're not focused on the right products, or on the right sales trends."

iQ4bis and NAU Case Study

NAU uses iQ4bis to achieve fast growth and control of their business. Nau is a start-up technical and lifestyle outdoor apparel company wiht a designe philosophy blending beauty, performance and sustainability and a committment to creating postive change. "We viewed an early implementation of iQ4bis and strategic, knowing it would deliver visibility of the information in our central data bank, and enable the responsive decision making that would help us meet our dual objectives and fast growth and control," said CIO Richard Hays. With iQ4bis, NAU obtains timely reports of sales results, analyze trends for new product development, optimize pricing and discounting policies and respond to store-by-store merchandising patterns. "I've managed business units with lots of different types of reporting systems. The power and ease of getting the information you need is better with iQ4bis than any of the others," said Hays.

iQ4bis and Nellson Case Study

Nellson Nutraceutical is a private-label contract manufacturer of nutrition bars and powders, with facilities in the US and Canada. With multiple ERP systems - JD Edwards in Canada and a Ross Enterprise ERP system in US, consolidating information from the various locations through Excel files was labor-intensive, inefficient and error-prone. With multiple ERP systems it was difficult to see all the data related to a single customer, yet that need was critical to understand operational performance in each customer situation. Nellson was headed toward the long, costly process of consolidating their ERP systems, until they adopted iQ4bis. With iQ4bis, they successfully consolidated results from their disparate ERP systems, enalbing better operational performance in all facilities. The iQ4bis business business intelligence solution enabled the Nellson team to quickly produce consolidated reports by extracting data from two ERP systems. Nellson avoided the expense and delay of consolidating multiple locations under a single ERP system, and the entire management team receives a "single version of the truth" in all reports including finance, sales, purchasing and inventory and manufacturing.

iQ4bis and Taser Case Study

iQ4bis empowers Taser's managers to perform their own analyses. "We were spending hours we didn't have creating sales reports. We upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics AX to provide a platform to support our phenomenal growth, but that didn't resolve our issues," said Nigel Deacon, Director of Application Development. Once implemented, the iQ4bis business intelligence solution provided upper level management with up-to-date snapshots of company performance, improved sales and customer information capture and analysis through managers' own real-time analysis and improved QA/QC process throught enhanced capabilities. "We needed a reporting tool that would provide near-real-time information and empower our management to perform their own analyses. iQ4bis delivered all of that in what turned out to be an extremely cost-effective package," said Deacon.

iQ4bis and Whitcoulls Case Study

iQ4bis Cianna Medical Case Study

Cianna Medical uses iQ4bis to stay ahead of the game. With a heavy sales ramp-up planned, the management team at Cianna needed to keep their thumb on the pulse of the business and chose iQ4bis as an early, strategic IT purchase to integrate with their Microsoft® Dynamics™ GP system. “We viewed early implementation of iQ4bis as essential, knowing that it was important for us to have robust business analysis and reporting tools early in the game – before we reached the point of actual need,” said Hugh Neuharth, chief financial officer for Cianna Medical. “The ROI for our company is based on getting in front of any sales and marketing analysis challenges. We knew that iQ4bis would deliver visibility of this information, and enable us to make the decisions necessary to stay on track with our revenue and company growth goals.” As Cianna’s sales team focuses on attracting new customers, the Company uses iQ4bis to quickly analyze product usage and patterns with current customers as an integral part of their overall strategy of providing the highest service levels in the industry. “Our sales team can quickly see what – and how frequently - our customers are purchasing, to help understand individual customer requirements,” says VP of Sales Charles Bracken. “Additionally, we can track their performance and identify new opportunities to help the team achieve their sales goals.” Cianna’s sales management also draws on iQ4bis to quickly dissect sales performance at a regional and sales rep level, and identify usage patterns that will influence decisions on territory alignments.