Omnia moves to `bakgat` BI

"It`s not often that users apply the term `bakgat` to describe any enterprise technology" says Faan Barnard, group IT manager at Omnia, but that`s why QlikView is not your average business intelligence (BI) solution. "This was the response to our requests for feedback on the technology."

The chemical services company started implementing the BI tool, QlikView, in one of its three divisions just over a year ago. QlikView is now widely used throughout the group and has rapidly gained credibility with users trusting the integrity of the data. Adriaan de Lange, financial manager of BME, the explosives division of the Omnia Group says, "There is less arguing about the numbers and more decision making because everyone trusts the information that comes out of QlikView."

Although there have been many advances in BI tools in the past twenty years, spreadsheets are still the primary BI tool in most companies. This was true of Omnia where the spreadsheet was the most widely used application to deliver financial reports across the business.

Until de Lange implemented QlikView, he was working with Excel. Whilst it gave him the control he wanted and provided needed information, it was slow and cumbersome because of the amount of data each spreadsheet contained. This made it impossible to distribute information electronically. "Some of our spreadsheets required more than 20MB. You cannot email that easily, particularly as some of our offices operate with a simple modem."

In addition, some of the spreadsheets were so complicated that only De Lange could maintain them. "We need to do a lot of work to reallocate costs and consolidate data. The process is very complex and time consuming. What surprised us with QlikView is the ease with which this is automated and the small size of the resulting Data Models. Even though we now work with a lot more history, QlikView`s compression technology reduces our data to an easily emailable 5KB so everyone is making decisions based on the same, trusted information."

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De Lange`s first objective was to eliminate the proliferation of reports and spreadsheets in his organisation and provide his users with data analytics to cover their sales, financial and inventory control requirements. Once this was completed, he shifted his focus from analysis of historical data to forecasting of both sales and costs. "QlikView has simplified our forecasting cycle. It keeps on surprising me. I have yet to come across a problem that I could not resolve with this tool", he says.

There are currently over 150 QlikView users in the Omnia Group, ranging from stock managers to financial directors with more employees requesting access to QlikView on a weekly basis. Barnard puts the users` rapid and enthusiastic adoption of the application down to fact that business people can easily use QlikView - it is incredibly fast and ultimately accurate.

"From a business perspective, we were very satisfied with the consulting services offered by QlikView South Africa. The company did high quality work and showed high commitment and professionalism" says Barnard.

Davide Hanan, MD of QlikView South Africa says, "Our objective is to deliver solutions in days, not months or years. The technology allows us to do that. This means our clients can see immediate results and the return on investment can be easily measured."