Signal Hill Products ensures proactivity, transparency with Qlik


Johannesburg, 23 Jan 2019

Overview

Signal Hill Products, originally Devil's Peak Brewery, was established in Cape Town in 2012, and has become a leading and pioneering craft brewery.

Fact sheet
Solution: Qlik Sense
Industry: Beer
Provider: South Africa Qlik Master Reseller - Premium
User: Signal Hill Products

With an appreciation for good beer in all of its forms, the business creates beers underpinned by flavour, character and depth. It uses only the finest ingredients from around the world. Signal Hills Products develops beers that push boundaries, offering something to savour in an increasingly frenetic world.

Devil's Peak beer.
Devil's Peak beer.

Beers include Devil's Peak Lager, First Light Golden Ale, Good Hope Pale Ale, King's Blockhouse IPA, Zero to Hero Pale Ale, and a number of special and collaborative releases.

Challenges

Before implementing Qlik Sense, Signal Hill Products operated without any formal reporting in place. "As a company in the craft beer industry breaking into the premium beer industry, we are growing at a blinding pace," confirms Hester Swart, Business Analyst at Signal Hill Products. "Without data, crucial decisions could not be made accurately, leading to costly errors."

In the past, business data was managed using Excel Sheets. "These sheets were over 100MB in size and contained an enormous amount of information, which made it difficult to navigate specific challenges," adds Marcus van Staden, Sales & Systems Analyst at Signal Hill Products.

These spreadsheets included varying data from about 20 different sources. "Data cleaning and management was a very tedious, long process, so no time was going into actually analysing the data," confirms Van Staden.

Solution

Seeking a solution to better match growth and overcome the above-mentioned challenges, Signal Hill Products began investigating relevant software in March 2018. After first experimenting with QlikView, and then with Qlik Sense: "The company very quickly saw the potential of Qlik," states Van Staden.

Before a buying decision was made, a comparative analysis was done. "The reports/apps were built in Qlik desktop and the competitor software," adds Swart.

After considering the analysis and certain critical criteria (cost, implementation time, functionality, support, training, scalability, user friendliness), Signal Hill Products implemented Qlik Sense in June 2018.

Hester Swart.
Hester Swart.

According to Van Staden, management was convinced to take up Qlik due to its functionality and visualisation capabilities. "From a back-end point of view, I didn't like the way data was linked in the previous tools explored. Although it was very robust on the front-end, the graphs and visuals being delivered by these tools weren't giving us the insights we desired. Qlik's functionality was an enormous step up from what we were used to."

The factors that led to the decision to implement Qlik Sense included:

* Low cost and maintenance;
* Fast implementation;
* Amazing level of scalability;
* High levels of support and training. "I tested Qlik a few times, logging support calls, and received an immediate response," confirms Van Staden;
* User friendliness;
* Capability to work on any data source; and
* Automation.

According to Swart, the implementation of the solution "was a very smooth ride". Prior to implementation, the team had conducted Qlik training, and Swart had developed her skills to build the apps they require in-house. "We went from getting the licences to being operational in about five days."

Van Staden agrees: "The implementation was very straightforward. All the data was there, so it was a 'plug and play' scenario. The SA Qlik team's support was phenomenal, we can chat to them about anything and get answers very quickly."

Signal Hill Products' staff quickly adapted to using the tool. "Management is amazed by the data interaction. They are in love with it," confirms Swart.

Benefits

Swart confirms that Qlik Sense has delivered a solution to Signal Hill Products' data and analysis problems. "The company now has daily and monthly reports being shared and used for informed decision-making."

She adds that the front-end set-up of the platform, the user side, is much easier to work with and create valuable data analysis. "In the past, decisions were largely informed by history, and real-time insights and responses were very limited. Now, with Qlik, we're actually making decisions based on real analysis of data, making the business more proactive and transparent," says Swart.

Marcus Van Staden.
Marcus Van Staden.

The business now has visibility in terms of how it's growing, and is able to view daily and monthly targets, making the business more proactive. With more transparency, users can check stock levels, the rate of sales, and general operational requirements at the click of a button. "This makes us a lot more agile and able to respond to demand faster. We're operating proactively instead of being reactive," she adds.

The Qlik platform has had a significant impact on Signal Hill Products' decision-making, management, and operational success:

* Better decisions are made;
* More insight into consumer needs;
* More realistic targets based on real information, leading to greater confidence;
* Performance tracking;
* Sales tracking;
* Structured planning on a detailed level;
* Enhanced asset ROI; and
* Daily refreshed data and in-depth analytics.

"Qlik Sense has had a massive impact on our management. It broke open our company and showed us where we are winning, where we are losing, and why," confirms Van Staden.

Implementation advice

Swart offers the following advice to businesses considering implementing Qlik solutions: "Qlik Sense Enterprise is the solution for analysing, visualising and storing data. Invest in training as it gives the developers that extra toolbox to develop an awesome application and a sustainable data model."

Signal Hill Products will be considering NPrinting in the near future. "We're also exploring making use of an automated publishing process for reports," concludes Van Staden. "With traditional methods, it takes a long time to gain insight out of data. I would recommend Qlik to anyone; it's a short-term and long-term solution to data management."

The future

Going forward, Swart will be working to combine some of the various Qlik apps into one dashboard, ensuring simplicity and enhancing the user experience.

The company is in the process of expanding the use of Qlik Sense to other operational areas, such as:

* Logistics;
* Marketing;
* Accounting/finance;
* Manufacturing; and
* Procurement.

Solution overview

Customer name: Signal Hill Products (originally Devil's Peak Brewing Company)

Industry: Beer

Function: Currently: Sales, asset management, strategic planning

Soon: Logistics, marketing, manufacturing, accounting, procurement

Geography: Cape Town, South Africa (operating countrywide)

Challenges: Lack of data analysis leading to difficult decision-making

Solution: After considering Qlik and its competitors, Signal Hill Products selected Qlik and implemented Qlik Sense.

Benefits:

* Pulling together of disparate data from varying sources;
* Reliable reporting and data analysis;
* Greater proactivity;
* More strategic decision-making;
* Confidence in decisions being made, based on real data;
* Realistic targets and growth trajectory; and
* Better planning and strategic direction.

Data source: Web file (ODATA), flat files in a Drobox folder (not very secure), Excel spreadsheet, distributors' systems.

(Currently, these files are converted to QVD files stored on a server, which is more central and secure.)

Five days from licensing to operational:

* Implementing the software: less than 10 days
* Training for front-end and back-end: 10 days
* Daily reports app development: five days
* Monthly reports app development: 20 days

Daily and monthly reports are changed daily, if needed, to create better user experience and analysis (thanks to Qlik's flexibility).

Operational efficiencies driven by 17 apps and 13 users, empowering data-driven sales, asset management, customer satisfaction, monthly insights:

* Daily, three apps
* Monthly, three apps
* Master, one app
* Planning, three apps
* Transforming, seven apps

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South Africa Qlik Master Reseller

South Africa Qlik Master Reseller (previously known as QlikView SA) has been a member of the EOH group of companies since 1 July 2014, facilitating a great partnership that aims to accelerate growth for Qlik in southern Africa directly or through its specialised partner channel. SA Qlik MR's portfolio of products meets customers' growing needs from reporting and self-service visual analysis to guided, embedded and custom analytics. Over 1 800 customers rely on Qlik solutions to gain meaning out of information from varied sources, exploring the hidden relationships within data that lead to insights that ignite good ideas.

These solutions bridge the gap between traditional BI solutions and inadequate spreadsheet applications. The in-memory associative search technology that Qlik pioneered, pioneered the self-service BI category, allowing users to explore information freely rather than being confined to a predefined path of questions. Appropriate from SME to the largest global enterprise, Qlik's self-service analysis can be deployed with data governance in days or weeks. The platform's app-driven model works with existing BI solutions, offering an immersive mobile and social, collaborative experience. Headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania, Qlik does business in more than 100 countries, with over 40 000 customers globally. For more information, please visit www.saqlik.com.

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