CFOs, finance departments turn to QlikView to rapidly gain visibility of corporate performance

QlikTech, the world's fastest-growing business intelligence (BI) software company, has announced that it will offer a free online benchmarking tool to allow CFOs and their staff to compare their company's financial performance with 60 000 peers in industries around the world across nearly two-dozen financial metrics.

The company made this global offer, valued at US$1 000 to illustrate how its solution is being leveraged by CFOs to better manage their business and seize opportunities during this economic downturn.

Interested executives can register to use the online benchmarking tool and create their own scorecard with data refreshed weekly at http://www.qlikview.com/campaigns/scorecard/Default.aspx?id=10028&LangType=1033&sourceid1=PR.

Companies have found that piecing together cash flow, profitability and operations data with Excel spreadsheets and static reports is inefficient and inadequate.

This benchmarking tool allows business users to work with QlikView to understand the Google-like simplicity it delivers to explore and drill down into financial data for complete and thorough analysis. QlikView is about serving up answers, on screen, with instant access to visually rich, interactive dashboards that anyone can quickly build and easily modify.

Using QlikView with public financial data furnished by Thomson Reuters, a CFO can see how their company stacks up in performance on key metrics including:

* Cash flow: Margin, days sales outstanding (DSO), growth, current and quick ratios
* Profitability: Gross profit, operating and net income margin
* Earnings: Earnings per share (EPS), price per share/earnings per share (P/E) ratio
* Revenue: Sales growth
* Efficiency: Asset turnover, inventory turnover, and expense rates
* Effectiveness: Return on assets (ROA), capital (ROC) and equity (ROE)

“With QlikView, I have the ability to pull sales information from our Oracle ERP and other systems to get a quick view of performance without running to IT for assistance,” said Bill Carroll, CFO of HoMedics, a global leader in personal care and wellness products.

“The ability to rapidly access accurate information with significant drill down capabilities provides the visibility that ultimately aids in making better decisions. And in the current economic climate, good decision-making and rapid execution have never been more important.”

QlikView's CFO-users reveal that their roles have evolved beyond policing budgets and financial reporting to broader responsibilities in operations and business strategy. With QlikView in-memory associative analysis, finance executives can implement performance management decision-making based on real-time enterprise visibility. With QlikView, finance and business users can easily visualise data relationships, performance drivers and risks to understand the changing dynamic of the big picture - insight that is often trapped in traditional business applications.

Like HoMedics, finance executives in thousands of companies worldwide use QlikView to visualise, analyse and report on their most critical financial information, including planning and forecasting, risk management, cost containment and compliance reporting. As a result, they are making significant and strategic contributions to their organisations' bottom line profitability and overall performance.

“As business conditions continue to shift, agility is imperative. QlikView is the ideal solution for CFOs and finance executives who need answers to pressing questions on cash flow, profitability, operating drivers, resource allocation and compliance - without relying on IT resources to create reports,” said Anthony Deighton, Senior Vice-President of Products at QlikTech. “With QlikView, business users have no limits to accessing these answers that can help them to determine where to best focus resources, cut costs and invest for growth.”