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Extensive QlikView deployment has major impact, swift payback at Illovo


Johannesburg, 28 Sep 2010

JSE-listed Illovo is Africa's biggest sugar producer. As a top supplier to African markets, the group focuses on cultivating high-yielding cane and low-cost production of high-quality sugar.

The company has a highly distributed footprint, with agricultural and manufacturing operations in six African countries, including seven mills on the continent and six in South Africa.

No BI

Independently operated, Illovo's mills all run separate ERP instances, says Dave Schaller, GM, Illovo Group IT. Located in remote rural settings, the mills are further at the mercy of spotty communication links, limiting live data processing at the company's Mount Edgecombe, Durban head office.

As a result, Illovo didn't have business intelligence (BI) until 2009, continues Schaller. “Operational and financial data used to be relayed to head office via e-mail, in Excel or PowerPoint format, and consolidated manually. Paper-based reports were compiled by the various head office departments on request, with considerable delay and limited analytics.”

Call for proposal

In July 2009, Illovo invited Insight Consulting, a high-profile Durban-based BI specialist firm, to propose a solution for automating the consolidation of its data, and to enable analytics, says Sean Taylor, partner at Insight. (Insight has since been named QlikView SA's Partner of the Year for 2010.)

“We were mindful of the dangers of traditional BI,” says Peter Smorfitt, Group System Development Manager at Illovo. “We didn't want something for which you'd need a gigantic data warehouse, developed over months at great cost, only to discover it's not what we need. QlikView data models can be developed quickly, and their incremental methodology yields quick wins. They also have a great reputation for innovation, ease of use and ease of implementation.”

Proof of concept

To prove the QlikView concept, Insight developed a benchmarking data model that compared spending data from all mills. The licences for this initial data model were procured in August 2009, and the solution delivered within three weeks.

Bandwidth promised to be one of the most serious challenges of the project, but its restrictions were easily overcome, says Taylor. “One of QlikView's many pros is its efficient compression. No other BI tool can deliver an 80 to 90-fold reduction in data footprint, and this has allowed us to transfer key information to head office and automate group-wide data consolidation. It's a remarkable turnaround for them, a revolution even.”

With server instances at all mills, Insight Consulting trickles BI data at times of low network utilisation, Taylor says. “At no time do we put the network under strain.”

Subsequent models

Subsequent to the initial data model, other more complex deployments have been ongoing, and a total of 140 licences have been sold to Illovo, says Taylor, also the lead consultant on the project.

“They have been continually building on the initial base. The initial engagement wasn't a budgeted initiative - the project budget only kicked in from April 2010, which was when the project really blossomed. After serving a small group of niche users, it is now finding numerous extra applications this year in sales, finance and HR.”

User acceptance

How did users receive the new technology? “QlikView did indeed prove very easy to implement,” says Smorfitt. “Certain users took to it like ducks to water, as QlikView really revolutionised their jobs. For the first time it allowed them to integrate data elements and perform powerful analysis within minutes - tasks which previously took weeks.”

The experience of Ricky Pillay, national sugar production and planning manager at Illovo, blew the executive away and opened Illovo up to much wider implementation. Pilly went on a two-day user training course and found the tool so easy and powerful that he developed his own predictive data model based on historic sales figures, one that auto-updates daily.

Benefits and impact

All three Illovo personnel cite considerable quantifiable benefits to the implementation. “We are for the first time able to analyse what-if scenarios,” says Smorfitt. “We can import certain variables like the influence of a changing exchange or sugar price on the business and make informed decisions on that basis.” Other benefits include more informed sales, with better stock intelligence, he says.

Schaller cites the ability of QlikView to pull data from multiple databases as a key benefit. “We don't have an all-in-one ERP to do everything; we follow a best-of-breed approach to BI, ERP, payroll and so on, so QlikView has to query multiple disparate data sources.”

He says the implementation turned out to be so intuitive to users that the business benefits were being felt within days. “Since the first implementation, we've applied QlikView to various other business processes.”

“I used to run a Discover report, which takes ages to update manually and is difficult to use. Data integrity was also a problem,” says Pillay. “With QlikView, information is pulled in amazingly easily from spreadsheets.”

In fact, Pillay has received budget to roll out his data model with regional sales managers. “What takes me 30 seconds to discover used to take the region up to five days. It's a no-brainer; everybody has to be on QlikView.”

ROI

Taylor says the benchmarking data model generated immediate value. “I'd say payback was pretty immediate, as there were startling variances between mills, which were eliminated.”

“An unacceptably high percentage of expenses were further being put through once-off payments, which don't enjoy the same checks and balances as the system for recurring payments,” adds Schaller. “Cleaning up that process also yielded results.”

As for the rest of the implementation, he says Illovo made a sizable investment in its 140 licences. “But in terms of actionable business intelligence for the business, there has been definite ROI.”

Pillay comments that his licence cost R10 000 but the payback has been “more than 100 times that, taken from the point of view of the decisions we've based on this QlikView data model”.

Future plans

“As regards future plans, Illovo is still in the midst of integrating QlikView throughout the business,” Schaller adds. “We're working through all the functional areas such as purchasing, stock, sales and HR. Where the need exists, we migrate to QlikView. It has been very beneficial everywhere and we will continue to roll it out in the group as we find appropriate applications for it.”

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QlikView South Africa

QlikView South Africa is the local representative and distributor for QlikTech, whose powerful, accessible business intelligence solution enables organisations to make better and faster decisions. Its QlikView product delivers enterprise-class analytics and search with the simplicity and ease of use of office productivity software. The in-memory associative search technology it pioneered makes calculations in real-time enabling business professionals to gain insight through intuitive data exploration. Unlike traditional business intelligence products, QlikView can deliver value in days or weeks rather than months, years, or not at all. It can be deployed on premise, in the cloud, or on a laptop or mobile device - from a single user to large global enterprises. QlikTech is headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania, with offices around the world and a network of over 1 100 partners to serve more than 13 000 customers in over 100 countries worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.qlikview.co.za.

Insight Consulting

Insight Consulting provides a full range of business intelligence services, specialising in QlikView business intelligence solutions. Consultants help organisations tap their existing data repositories and extract key information elements into QlikView models that are extremely fast, easy to use and allow for rapid, in-depth analysis of critical business information. Insight Consulting's founding members have worked in the business intelligence industry for several years and have successfully implemented numerous projects to optimise information delivery across business units.

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