Standard Life, a subsidiary of the Edinburgh-based Standard Life financial services group, was facing challenges in monitoring broker performance in near real time. The company was using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with extracts from Microsoft SQL server data management software to prepare monitoring reports for distribution to management by email messaging. This process was laborious and time-consuming. Standard Life had two immediate priorities for any new business intelligence (BI) software. The first was for a persistency report showing which insurance policies have lapsed by broker for visibility by high ranking executives and actuaries. The second was to create a Management Information Pack with daily and monthly sales reports by broker for overview by senior management and sales managers.

Systemair, a leading ventilation company with operations mainly in Europe and North America, faced several challenges. The company needed to share valuable business data locked in its Movex ERP system with more than 25 subsidiaries throughout Europe. The goal was to simplify and speed up data analysis enterprise-wide for improved decision-making. Additionally, Systemair wanted tighter control over business processes and operations to ensure 24x7 product availability for customers. As the business complexity grew, the existing system of analyzing data with simple SQL queries and Excel became unworkable.

UWV, a governmental organization in the Netherlands, was facing the challenge of replacing all paper and static reporting with dynamic models for reporting and analysis, directly tuned to the information requirements of the users. The volume of paper reports within the HRM department was growing continuously, with each report being created manually with data from the personnel information management system. The departmental management team wanted to replace these reports, which were already dated the day they were distributed, with automated, 24/7, dynamic reports presented in an easy to use dashboard environment with slice and dice and drill down functionality.

Van Oirschot, a supplier of heating and installation materials for professional installers in Flanders, was facing the challenge of implementing a reporting and analysis tool that ensures consistent information provision and provides easier insight into Microsoft Navision data. The company operates five branches and a central distribution centre in Flanders. It creates added value by handling additional aspects for its customers, such as transport, stocking, provision of credit, collection and splitting, packaging and repackaging, services, guarantees, returns, information provision and training. However, it was crucial for the company to remain competitive and innovative in the face of increasing competition, chain integration and cost pressure. Moreover, their customers were expecting greater flexibility, longer opening hours and automated ordering processes.

Vellinge Municipality was facing a challenge of analyzing information residing in disparate source systems. They needed stronger controls in order to reduce overall operating costs. The solution required was one that could be used by employees lacking formal finance training and background. The municipality had a policy of keeping the income tax rates low, which meant that everyone in the organization needed to review all costs associated with every departmental decision. This involved approximately 10 controllers and 60 managers with budget responsibility sitting in different locations. Before implementing QlikView, they had to compare printouts from different systems manually to compile the information. In many cases, they even had to manage without the necessary information.

VIP Parts, Tires & Service, the largest privately owned US automotive aftermarket retail chain, was facing several challenges. The company wanted to replace its one-dimensional merchandising hierarchy reporting with multilevel merchandising and business unit views. They were also struggling with integrating disparate data from multiple systems. The company was seeking to increase the visibility of operational KPIs throughout the organization. The company's sophisticated business footprint spans retail, wholesale, fleet, and commercial divisions, making it crucial to have a comprehensive and integrated view of all operations.

WD-40, a global consumer products organization, was facing challenges in analyzing reported data and gaining insights into customer behavior. The company was relying on hard copy weekly reports to provide crucial business detail, which was putting increasing pressure on the IT department to produce more meaningful sales information in a user-friendly, real-time application. The traditional reports created by the company’s previous ERP system were both costly to produce and lacked important detail. A data analysis tool was needed to support WD-40’s growing business and to ease the pressure on IT resources. The company also needed applications that would support, speed up and simplify financial reporting to its parent in the US, a logistics application for better order-to-delivery efficiency and pan-European sales analysis for proactive management.

WECO Pyrotechnische Fabrik, a leading fireworks producer in Europe, faced challenges in managing its multi-stage in-house production system and purchasing merchandise from abroad. The company required accurate logistics planning to ensure all branch outlets received their stocks in time for New Year’s Eve sales. The same level of accuracy was needed for planning production and import schedules. For a long time, data analysis was done using Microsoft Dynamics NAV business management software coupled with individually programmed reports. However, this procedure proved to be time-consuming and error-prone. The data was first exported from the inventory management system into various different Excel worksheets and then collated. This process led to errors and could only assess and optimise processes in retrospect.

York Minster, a world-renowned cathedral, is a large organization with around 150 employees and 500 volunteer workers. The operational costs of the Minster are incredibly high, amounting to £9 per minute, 24 hours a day. As a registered charity, it depends on donations and visitors fees to survive. This means that the Minster has had to become increasingly aware of its income streams in order to improve margins and keep reinvesting in its many community and regeneration projects. The IT department is relatively small, with two employees including IT Manager David Wilkinson. Wilkinson also acts as Assistant to the Chief Accountant, and it is this dual role that brought him to QlikView. “When we started charging for entry into the Minster, we needed to be able to analyse visitor trends and tills data. We also wanted to identify where we were improving, especially how much income was coming through from GiftAid and the sale of guide books,” says Wilkinson.

Zurich Insurance, a leading insurance-based financial services provider in the Nordic region, faced several challenges. They needed to better assess risks and business potential of insurance solutions, link together insurance systems while making them more adaptable and easier to use, and perform fast and flexible analyses on different customers, types of damages, countries, and products. The company's underwriters, who assess the risks and business potential of all insurance solutions, needed a tool that makes it easy to link different local databases together and perform fast and flexible analysis regarding different customers, types of damage, countries and products.

Health Market Science (HMS) is a leading manufacturer of healthcare provider data in the United States. The company's flagship product, the HMS Provider Master File, includes detailed reference information for over 4.5 million individual practitioners and 1.0 million healthcare organizations. However, the company faced challenges in continuously tracking, integrating, analyzing, cleansing, and packaging millions of records of data from thousands of sources. The company's business analysts depended on as many as three programmers to write SQL code for a new, complex analysis. This process was time-consuming and sometimes led to different answers to a query depending on who was writing the code. HMS needed a solution that would enable business analysts to analyze data without support from programmers and meet requirements without the cost, complexity, and time required by traditional OLAP cube solutions.

Dorman Products, a leading supplier of automotive and heavy-duty replacement parts, was facing challenges in project and support testing cycles due to the large orders they were processing. The Quality Assurance (QA) team was responsible for ensuring optimal support for new products, enhancements, and bug fixes. However, they were struggling with addressing order-related issues in a timely manner. Each order could have several thousands of order lines, making it difficult and time-consuming to recreate and debug issues. The process to replicate and debug production problems was highly manual and involved many steps. The team recognized the need for a solution to streamline this multi-step process.

When Ian Kane, Senior Data Warehouse Architect, joined Wombat Security Technologies, his job was to build a data warehouse from scratch. With the Wombat Security Technologies already on the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) in MySQL, moving the data to a Postgres database Amazon RDS was a natural choice given that they were already on the Amazon Cloud. Most of the ETL coding would be usable on a standard Postgres RDBMS. Because they regenerate their data warehouse every 15 minutes doing ETL, they needed a solution that could do log-based change data capture (CDC) to migrate their data continuously.

MTech Systems, a company operating in the live protein industry, was facing a growing demand from its customers for faster access to more robust reporting and the ability to interact with data in a visual format. The company was also looking to broaden its target audience within its current segments. Furthermore, the industry was experiencing an explosion of new data as equipment, house controllers, gauges, and more were coming online. This presented a challenge for MTech Systems' customers to benefit from and better manage this influx of data.

StoreNext, a leading research and analysis firm in the consumer goods market in Israel, was looking to improve its value proposition. The company wanted to launch a next-generation self-service Business Intelligence (BI) solution that would allow its clients to analyze millions of transactions to better understand market trends. Additionally, StoreNext's clients had been requesting mobile capabilities, which the company was keen to provide. Another challenge was the company's reliance on external consultants for the development of the solution, which they wanted to reduce.

CEGID Group, a provider of management software for organizations in multiple industries, was looking to enhance its software-as-a-service offering. The company wanted to provide its clients with a seamless experience that would allow them to easily collaborate and explore data through customized dashboards. However, the company faced challenges in achieving this goal without requiring special training for its clients.

Financial Services organization Meilleurtaux identified an urgent need to deploy commercial and marketing applications for their franchise agencies. The agencies required access to in-depth analysis to make informed decisions that would drive the business. The challenge was to find a solution that could provide the necessary data and analytics to the agencies in a user-friendly and accessible manner.

Puget Sound Energy, a Washington State-based company, supplies electrical and natural gas services to approximately four million Americans daily. The majority of the business operations are run on SAP, making it crucial to limit outages when implementing SAP changes. To ensure smooth transitions, data must be accurately placed in the right systems at the right time to prototype, test, and implement new SAP implementations. The company has 12 SAP instances and is constantly adding new products, making the process of updates and data synchronization a significant challenge.