NHP gets full-on BI capability in ‘weeks’ with IQ4bis

The electrical engineering products company also had a ‘Proof of Concept” prototype up-and-running in a week. Now, NHP has the up-to-date, timely reports it needs to make informed decisions…

The flat-file reports they were receiving were only telling managers at NHP Electrical Engineering Products part of the story they needed to hear. The Australasian company needed to know much more, but to do any further analysis another round of reporting was required.

While the company was happy with its AS/400 (IBM i-Series) based BPCS enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, to the point where it had even developed some highly sophisticated business processes, the reporting issue was starting to raise red flags for management.

NHP has quite a complicated operation. The company carries some 25,000 inventory line items, has multiple warehouses and an online store, as well as 19 branches throughout Australia and New Zealand. With this complexity, it was beginning to find it difficult to generate standardised management reports that could provide an up-to-date overview of the organisation.

NHP’s business involves bringing together products, systems and solutions from across five key electro-technology sectors: motor control; power distribution; hazardous area equipment and control; enclosure systems and power quality; and automation and safety. It serves both the Australian and New Zealand industries, and has a region-wide team of 790 that includes experts drawn from a wide range of localities and industrial backgrounds.

BI: best option for analysis
“We wanted to standardise our reporting capabilities and give our upper level and line managers the ability to query those reports,” says Vic Wotherspoon, NHP’s general manager, IT and process improvement.

“We carry a wide variety of products from different suppliers, so we wanted to be able to calculate quickly what stock is the fastest moving, as well as to be able to compare performances from different outlets and regions. This type of reporting analytics was clearly beyond the capabilities of our system, so we knew we needed to upgrade.”

A business intelligence (BI) and reporting analytics solution was the obvious choice, but Wotherspoon wanted to ensure that the solution selected would address NHP’s specific requirements.

“As we started to evaluate the BI solutions available, we kept hearing about iQ4bis from New Zealand,” says Wotherspoon.

“Not only did it have a transparent interface to our BPCS ERP system, via Microsoft SQL, but the company also had local representation in Australia and a good track record. But, more importantly, they claimed that they could implement fully functioning BI capabilities within an organisation like ours in a matter of weeks, instead of months. So we contacted them to see what they could do for us.”

“They said all the right things – cost-effective, rapid deployment, high success rate.

“But what really impressed us is that they offered to provide a no-obligation ‘Proof of Concept’ (PoC) demonstration in which they would build a prototype BI solution using our own data. And they said they could do it in less than a week. What did we have to lose?”

“NHP had a highly developed set of business processes, plenty of well-structured data in standard formats and a huge need for flexible and easy-to-understand reporting analytics,” says Curtis Williams, business development manager for iQ4bis Australia. 

We have implemented iQ4bis for similar organisations that use BPCS so we were able to build a sales ‘cube’ from an extract of their data quickly and easily. When we showed them how easy it was and what they could pull out of the database at the PoC, they were sold.”

“During our implementation, the team from iQ4bis helped us refine the initial sales cube and design additional views for specific roles within the organisation,” says Wotherspoon.

“Their approach is to show us how it is done the first time and then to turn the tasks over to us. As a result, we are now fully capable of doing our own development.”

One-year payback
“Whilst a complete ROI was not conducted,” says Wotherspoon, “we believe that the system will pay for itself within a year and will be a BI platform we can use and expand on. We can now make informed and reliable decisions in a timely manner.

“The major benefit for us is that we now have a set of up-to-date, standardised analytical reports that enable us to make more informed decisions in respect of day-to-day operations, strategic planning and overall management.

“We initially opted for a 50-user licence, but the solution proved so popular at all levels of management that we quickly acquired a site licence. We can safely say that the insights we have gained from using iQ4bis have helped us streamline our operations and improve our responses to changes in the marketplace.”

Another benefit for NHP has been an improvement in overall data quality.

“Because we can now see our data in a more rigorous context, any discrepancies, omissions or incorrect categorisations really jump out at us,” says Wotherspoon.

“While there was nothing really terrible, we were able to pinpoint areas in our data-capture process that were causing issues with the integrity of the databases. Once we saw what was happening, we were able to fix the problems quickly and easily, and improve the entire operation. So, not only are we using our databases proactively now, for strategic initiatives and analyses, but we have more confidence in our numbers than ever before.”

Wotherspoon has become a business intelligence advocate. “iQ4bis proved to us that business intelligence and reporting analytics don’t have to be expensive, difficult or time-consuming.” 

“And, because, with a site licence, it is browser-based, any number of our people now have immediate access to the information they need, on a daily basis. They can do their jobs faster, better and with more confidence. Now, whenever we have a question or need to solve a problem, the answer is just a few clicks away.”

> iQ4bis Software (NZ) Ltd
W: www.iq4bis.com
Sunesh Samarasinghe
General Manager – Asia Pacific
P: 09 529 3767
E: sunesh@iq4bis.com

9/5/12_ex_h_nl

View Solution Provider