Business intelligence company QlikView saw its strongest financial month in March and strongest fourth quarter in 2011, and has set out aggressive plans to strategically grow both its customer and channel partner base.
This is according to Davide Hanan, MD of QlikView SA, who spoke during yesterday's QlikView User Conference, held at the Sandton Convention Centre.
Hanan quoted figures that showed the BI vendor's rapid expansion from having 382 customers three years ago to almost doubling this number to 575 by 2012.
“As of last week Friday, we have grown by 52% to reach 874 customers,” Hanan added. “Every month we acquire another 22 customers, which works out to a new customer for every business day.”
According to Hanan, QlikView's channel partner base is established and has gained maturity over recent years. The company now has 40 partners that account for more than 44% of its sales.
QlikView is also driving Business Discovery, its user-driven BI platform, which aims to change the way business users access BI, work with data, and interact with technology, as well as change users' attitudes when it comes to BI.
Business Discovery takes advantage of consumer trends that is shifting the BI software market - Internet search, social analytics, mobile technology and lightweight apps.
“Business Discovery is about identifying a problem, making better decisions and catapulting a business forward,” noted Hanan.
He pointed out that the concept of single, enterprise-wide BI is flawed: “Less than 30% of the potential users make use of an organisation's standard BI tools today, according to Gartner.”
Hanan quoted from Gartner research and said it is better to have a pragmatic portfolio of solutions than an unworkable single-vendor solution. “By 2014, the metamorphosis of BI from IT-owned to business-owned will be virtually complete for a large number of enterprises.”
He added: “Empowered consumers are changing the world. We need to realise that decisions are being made daily at all levels of an organisation. The business user is now at the beginning of a business decision-making process and not at the end.”
Hanan explained that, on average, it takes four days for a company to add one column to a traditional BI report. This is because, he said, most companies have a BI solution that is neither flexible nor adaptive to change.
During yesterday's conference, QlikView revealed that it has rolled out a Business Discovery competition that will offer R50 000 to the first three people who make or save their companies R1 million using QlikView technology. The competition closes on 12 October.
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