WPK Agriculture has implemented CorVu, a business intelligence (BI) application that gives the company access to transactional data on a near real-time basis. Now able to measure and monitor business performance, as well as identify and cater to the demands of its key customers, WPK believes the solution will give it a huge technological advantage over its rivals.
"The implementation of the BI solution gives us a competitive-edge by allowing us to better understand our customers` buying patterns and manage the performance of our various divisions and branches," says Henty Groenewald, operations manager for WPK`s retail division. "Access to management data is done in near real-time, a task which previously took our IT department months to deliver on."
WPK, a listed entity with a R970 million annual turnover, offers a wide range of products and services in the agricultural sector. The company has numerous interests, including retail outlets (Agrimark), a packaging material warehouse and depots, a grain division and a mechanisation division. The group currently has 52 operation points in 32 towns where services are rendered.
"Our competitors include other co-operatives, small and medium specialist suppliers selling goods directly to farmers and manufacturing organisations, as well as speciality stores. As with most companies, 20% of our customers provide 80% of our revenues, so our current priority is to better understand our key customers` buying patterns. This will enable us to better serve those customers and improve the performance of our various divisions and branches," says Groenewald.
WPK`S current IT backbone, a home-grown ERP solution, was developed on a Progress platform and implemented in 1983. The solution is, however, still character-based and any reports or queries requested by management needed to be hard-coded by the IT department.
"The process of developing the reports could take weeks or months depending on the capacity of the IT department. Just creating the end-of-month report requirements accounted for a considerable portion of management time," says Groenewald.
While the ERP system is being redeveloped to run on a Linux as well as the current SCO/Unix platform, giving users greater access to data through a user-friendly GUI and Web interface, this project will not be completed until the end of 2003. "We needed to cater for the current ERP system`s shortcomings and give users access to the data in the format they required to make management decisions more timeously," explains Groenewald.
Two BI solutions were assessed: Microsoft`s SQL Server with ComShare`s Decision Web as a front-end tool, and CorVu. "We were already running the ComShare FDC solution to consolidate our financial data but we needed broader functionality," explains Groenewald. "Because it was a non-Progress solution, ComShare FDC required that all the data be extracted from our ERP system to a data warehouse or intermediate database, where the filtering of information for queries and reports could then be done - a laborious and expensive process which we would have to follow if we selected Decision Web.
"The CorVu BI solution, however, provided native access into our Progress database, allowing us to access data in real-time. The cost of ownership and initial licence costs of the CorVu solution was also half that of the ComShare solution. In addition, we also liked the fact that we could have one point of contact for both the software application requirements and the BI solution requirements, since both were Progress-based."
The CorVu implementation started in October 2002 and phase one is now complete. "Our first priority was to facilitate performance management," notes Groenewald. "ILC, a Progress implementation partner, assisted us in defining the key performance indicators (KPIs) and user requirements and we have now implemented a dashboard-type solution that looks at these KPIs from a macro and micro perspective.
"This allows us to measure performance according to company-wide targets and drill down to financial performance at division or branch levels to see where budgets are being overrun or turnover patterns are inconsistent."
The solution has been rolled out to 15 key staff members representing top-level management, division heads and branch managers. "We hope to extend access to the BI functionality to another 25 users by the end of 2003 via an intranet and also implement the CorVu Balanced Scorecard module, which will help us define individual targets and goals.
"This is just the first step," emphasises Groenewald. "The business intelligence solution is not being seen as a technology solution but as a business solution and there are many more benefits to be derived from company-wide use of the solution."
"We are delighted with WPK`s decision to implement our CorVu BI offering. The initial stages have been completed very successfully and we are very excited about the extended functionality WPK are planning to roll-out during the course of this year," says Rick Parry, MD of Progress.
WPK`s Progress-based ERP solution is a home-grown system developed in 1983 to run on a SCO/Unix platform. The system has been sold to a number of other co-operatives after the establishment of WPK`s IT division as a standalone business unit. This division, dubbed Agri IT, is 100% owned by WPK. WPK`s priorities have shifted, however, and the focus for Agri IT is once again on the requirements of WPK, not on its commercial IT activities. The ERP solution is being rewritten to include Web functionality and also run on a Linux platform, assisting WPK to keep pace with new technology developments.
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