PG`s holistic view boosts the business

Building glass wholesale distributor and emergency glass replacement service provider, PG Glass, is reaping significant benefit from its decision some years ago to become an early adopter of business intelligence (BI) technology.

According to PG Glass FD, Paul Roberts, BI has fundamentally changed the way the company conducts business by allowing it to access, analyse report and share business information. "Seagate Holos has enabled us to look into the future and predict where our business is going," he says.

Elza le Roux, BI systems manager at PG Glass, says BI technology is now so important a part of the business that she doubts the company would be willing to do without it now. "The key to success in this competitive world is turning data into information. [Seagate] Holos allows us to consolidate and manipulate huge volumes of data created by our administrative systems and convert this into information useful to management of the business.

"It enables managers to maximise their business by spotting opportunities to grow, improve profitability and increase revenue. It empowers them by providing information critical to the decision-making process."

To illustrate her point Le Roux cites the metric of inventory. "For the distribution business, stock-on-hand represents a significant investment and any reductions you can make through more accurate forecasting is bound to improve your cash flow."

"BI technology enables this while ensuring that information is made available to operational management in an easily decipherable form - typically in the form of graphs and charts," she adds.

To this end Le Roux and her staff have created a plethora of electronic reports, each of which references data stored within a Holos cube. "This allows management to dynamically slice and dice information in any way they want to, or indeed, need to."

"For example, through a series of mouse clicks they can drill down to accurately determine sales per employee by branch or business unit. Alternatively, a financial manager may need to see which branches have customers in arrears beyond a certain value or ageing - allowing us to liquidate customers before they liquidate us."

Rob Curle, operations and sales director, concurs: "Holos allows you to access information about the business that any layman can use. It allows you to track dangerous trends that you can turn into opportunities."

An example useful at branch level is the ability to view customer profitability, weekly sales and financial forecasting at a glance.

Divisional director, Johan von Backstrom, has seen the benefit of this functionality: "Holos has given me an in depth study opportunity of my own sales centre`s performance," he notes.

Vivek Thomas, regional marketing manager at Seagate Software, agrees.

"Globalisation is making competitive advantage increasingly difficult to achieve. However, the ability to access, analyse report and share business information enables companies to cut costs, streamline processes and compete more effectively on the global stage," he says.