QlikView Boosting Epicor for Supply Chain Analytics: Less Is More

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QlikView Boosting Epicor for Supply Chain
Analytics Less Is More
Inside Info
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Youd be amazed how many times I see 100s of
packaged reports and data cubes put forward as an
effective solution for managing performance
across the supply chain or business in general,
with companies still wondering why these business
intelligence solutions arent widely used,
service levels arent where they should be and
business visibility is blurred. In short its
too hard, too costly and doesnt deliver
information in a way that can be easily explored
to answer questions.   Fujitsu General is one
organisation that has turned the corner,
providing information on-demand across the
business to deliver an effective, high performing
supply chain with exceptional results, delivering
value in just three weeks. Business intelligence
solutions have evolved beyond reporting. 
Organisations are demanding analysis that is
faster and more flexible to fulfill different
reporting demands. This would include improving
the timeliness of information, data presentation,
capabilities to interact and work with data, and
IT delivering more value out to the business for
making everyday decisions.
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Leading supplier of air conditioners Fujitsu
General (Aust.) was like many, pushing out
formatted, standard reports to the business, but
having no real time reporting that could be
flexibly provided and analysed when needed by
operational, sales, marketing, finance and
management teams to understand performance. 
Their Epicor system was doing a great job of
managing ERP transactional data but Fujitsu were
forced to run multiple, limited access reports,
consuming over 6 hours a month, to try to glean
any information from that data, that was always a
month behind. With offices and warehouse
facilities established in all major capital
cities around Australia, Fujitsu sells  and
services over 2,500 points of presence that
comprise their retailer and dealer sales channels
across the country.  With such a broad network,
management of sales and marketing initiatives
with associated stock impacts was difficult due
to the complexity and inter-reliance between
rebates, customer orders, stock allocations,
deliveries and various levels of product views
needed.
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To increase line level, cost and stock allocation
profitability and improve sales and marketing
initiatives in the areas of rebates, customer
orders, stock allocations and deliveries, Fujitsu
deployed a QlikView business intelligence applicat
ion with the help of Inside Info that analysed
performance across sales, rebates and inventory
integrating with the Epicor ERP system. Improved
cost and inventory management A critical part of
managing supply chain processes understands the
flow of goods through the organisation.  Any
number of factors can have a dramatic effect on
inventory stock levels. Fujitsus challenge was
to ensure an optimal level of stock to meet usage
requirements with the least impact on operating
capital, especially in light of long stock
replenishment timeframes.  Fujitsus QlikView
model that Inside Info developed analyses over
1,000,000 order transaction lines categorising
60,000 inventory items into any level of either
category, product type, model and component
parts, to understand business impact. 
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Epicor picks up the kit of available items that
form part of an order, QlikView separates out
each of these items and assigns individual
costs.  This approach has delivered a 10
improvement in cost allocation to product items
and therefore more accurately measuring margin
and resulting product and customer health, more
effectively. Furthermore, QlikView has improved
inventory management for Fujitsu by 12, helping
administrators pre-empt orders, delivery plans
and inventory glitches by understanding
unallocated stock.   Based on this knowledge a
Bill Plan is then created in Epicor, so orders
can be filled by the right delivery deadline.
Within a couple of  clicks any performance
failures can by pinpointed by customer, by
product, by line item, by location and by order
for open and closed sales.  Fujitsu General can
immediately see at a total and transactional
level, the cost of stock held by customer and
their product lines.  This can be used to
understand the highest value older stock on hand
that should be the focus of a run out promotion.
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Supply and demand in sync with cross-functional
data analysis One of the key drivers of supply
chain management is to achieve the perfect
order for customers at every opportunity.
 Managers need to know where demand is coming
from, where it is greatest, who is buying the
goods, and how these factors change over time. 
This information enables them to understand
actual demand versus forecasts, and relate that
to the performance of the internal supply
chain. Also critical is the ability to quantify
and analyse the effectiveness of the fulfillment
process the ability to fulfill customer orders
efficiently and in a timely manner. Fujitsu have
successfully married supply and demand within the
organisation, managing the complex
interrelationship of products, marketing
promotions, rebates and inventory for suppliers
and resellers doing business as part of its
network.   For example, QlikView is used to
verify invoicing and stock in transit with
resellers.  Allowing analysis of individual store
and group level performance of retail outlets for
each individual customer, by analysing ship to
numbers rather than billing addresses.
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QlikView also keeps a handle on promotional
rebates paid to channel, which form a significant
portion of the marketing budget.  Finance, sales
and marketing can see what stock levels retailers
have committed to, if its driven by a specific
promotion and the cash-back rebates or discounts
theyre receiving, lining up with fulfillment of
these to targets.  QlikView is then used to check
stock availability for commitments to ensure
demand and supply match.  The result a 15
improved return on rebate investment by better
aligning customer contribution with rebates
payable and resources spent. Insight on-demand
and ease of use are key IT teams generally find
ways to improve their processes for data
aggregation, integration and storage, but data
delivery and simple exploration of the data
continues to present a challenge.  Business
intelligence tools must be useful and accessible
to the less-technical among us, especially to
deliver ad hoc query and analysis which is what
most of us use them for according to the latest
2012 BI Survey 12 report.
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The differentiating factor is to provide
interactive data delivery and analysis in way
that is simple, with powerful, unrestricted query
capability that can deliver value fast.  In the
case of Fujitsu General, they used in-memory
associative technology on a single platform to
make data more usable, timely, and easier to
develop and deliver.  This meant Fujitsu could
design, deploy and use their QlikView solution
analysing performance across sales, rebates and
inventory in just 3 weeks.  An alternative
approach would have taken on average 4 months and
be quite services intensive. Sales, management,
operational and finance teams now explore data on
their own in the one dashboard-style application
and drill into the underlying details with just a
few clicks for quick answers to their business
questions with near instant response times,
updated every few hours.  This process improved
Fujitsus IT staff productivity by 12 in not
having to constantly author and produce reports.
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Taking some tips from Fujitsu and its ability to
easily consume and interact with its data, we can
see that to optimise decisions and generate
maximum efficiencies, companies can look to a
business intelligence solution that provides
insight across the entire chain, can respond to
changes, and can show how performance at one
stage can affect outcomes further down the line.
The point is to not just report, but to allow
detailed exploration of the data in a simple to
use, simple to deploy way to understand
operational effectiveness, quantify inefficiency,
and identify where to optimise to achieve goals
faster to improve the bottom line.
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Thank You
Inside Info