Power NI, a leading independent all-island energy utility in Ireland, was reliant on 'legacy' customer management systems. They found that they were not making the best use of the information they had or able to access all the information they needed. They wanted better reporting and analysis, what QlikTech would describe as Business Discovery. The company was looking for a solution that could provide analysis reporting on sales and debt management for business customers and could be shared with customers through 'Energy on Line' to allow them to understand their energy consumption.

Reifenhäuser, a leading supplier of machines and manufacturing plant for the plasticisation of thermoplastic synthetic materials, faced challenges due to the changing landscape of the synthetic materials and plastic processing industry. The industry faced demands for plastics to bear the “green dot” to show their suitability for recycling and it’s now necessary to meet even tougher environmental standards to find solutions which are not hydrocarbons-based. The company also had to consider the environmental conditions at manufacturing sites. The company was also facing issues with its previous systems which had failed to provide any comprehensive evaluation of the in-house databases. The costs involved in making even the slightest modifications were prohibitive. Using Excel spreadsheets when working on complex analysis operations was unproductive and the results could not be easily reproduced.

Reliance Life Insurance was facing several challenges with their reporting process. The process was manual, with employees having to extract data from the Life Asia software and compile them in Excel. This was not only time-consuming but also led to issues with accuracy and consistency between reports. There were no linkages between the Excel sheets, which made comparative studies difficult and delayed decision-making. The company needed a solution that could provide customized solutions to their clients, both individual and corporate, and provide access to reporting tools that could analyze the data and drill down to the bleeding end or profitable sources.

Robinsons Group, a leading upscale retailer operating 18 retail stores in Singapore and Malaysia, faced several challenges. They needed to reduce paper reporting to speed operational decisions and actions at the store level. They also needed to implement an easy-to-use business intelligence system that employees could use effectively with very little training. Furthermore, they wanted to develop at-a-glance digital views of business and operational performance. The company was looking for a solution that could provide faster access to more actionable data leading to smarter, timelier decisions. They also wanted to decrease their reliance on clumsy paper reports and increase efficiency when working with data, creating reports, and sharing information.

Robinsons Brewery, one of the UK's largest regional brewers, was facing a challenge with its existing reporting system. The company had a vast amount of information to manage, stemming from its estate of over 370 public houses and its expansion into wholesale, free trade, off-trade activity, and state-of-the-art brewing and bottling facilities. The existing system was inefficient and expensive, taking up to two weeks to extract data from different sources such as Dynamics NAV, SQL data warehouse, and Excel. This time-consuming process was hindering the company's growth, and a more efficient and economical system was needed.

Roxcel Group, a leading global retailer and wholesaler of paper and cartons, was facing challenges in managing its international transit trade due to its intense growth and presence in diverse markets. The company needed to gain an overview of all orders, flow of goods, and funds. The existing ERP solution was no longer sufficient to control the international transit trade. The company also needed to provide analysis capabilities on top of its internal ERP application and consolidate data across its global branches. The company was considering developing an analysis solution by itself.

Schenker, a leading provider of integrated logistics services, was facing several challenges. The company wanted to maintain its status as one of the world's leading providers of integrated logistics services. It aimed to improve customer service quality with reliability and on-time delivery rates. Additionally, Schenker wanted to maximize cost efficiencies while minimizing its environmental footprint. The company needed a solution that could help it track and report on the status, location, and timing of shipments to improve on-time delivery and track container loads to ensure moving at capacity and minimizing fuel and environmental costs.

SIBA, a leading home electronics retailer in the Nordics, was facing challenges in increasing efficiency in compiling accounting reports across stores. The company was struggling with the usefulness of the information locked in hand-compiled binders and was looking for ways to enhance information sharing across all retail store locations. Every month, SIBA had to compile the accounts for every store within the SIBA group manually. Accounts were put together at each store, forwarded to headquarters, and then compiled into a binder. With 53 electronic department stores as part of the group, this resulted in a large number of binders. The work with the accounts every month was time-consuming and the results were poor. Despite the investment in labor to compile monthly data, there was little to show for the effort.

Siempelkamp Maschinen-und Anlagenbau, a machine and plant construction company, was facing challenges in maintaining transparency in their figures, project calculations, and deadlines. The construction of a plant can take 12-15 months from the planning stage to sign off, and throughout this period, all the managers involved must constantly make target/actual comparisons to ascertain progress status. The key questions were whether they were still within deadlines, whether all materials could be delivered and used on schedule, and whether all budgetary costs were being met. The company needed a tool that would allow them and indeed the users themselves, anytime and anywhere, to make the analyses and evaluations they needed for project control without having to rely on IT.

SI International, a leading provider of mission-critical information technology and network solutions to the U.S. Federal Government, was facing a challenge of centralizing and simplifying the flow of information into operational and management reports on more than 400 IT projects at more than 100 high-profile customer sites. The company was struggling with costly, hard-to-implement, and hard-to-maintain traditional BI initiatives. The company was delivering more than 400 customer-critical projects with employees at about 30 company offices and over 100 customer sites. The company supports federal government customers like the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, Bureau of the Census, Federal Communications Commission and other Federal agencies.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) was tasked with the challenge of reinvigorating its industry learning process and building students' understanding of data analytics. The university wanted to bring practical industry experience into learning practices. Keith Carter, Adjunct Associate Professor at the Business School in Decision Sciences and APAC Regional President 1st Call Consulting, was given the task of developing a new curriculum that would engage students with the industry and practice, moving them away from a typical textbook learning method. He had only two weeks to develop this curriculum and was given a completely blank sheet to work from.

Sony Europe, a leading Japanese manufacturer of electronic consumer products, was in need of a quick, reliable business intelligence (BI) solution capable of covering multiple analysis scenarios. The company, which had a turnover in Spain of €1.166 billion in 2009, recognized the need for a BI tool that could integrate various sources of information into a single BI environment. The company sought a solution that could assist with decision-making and increase the degree of independence of each of the business areas.

Stichting Studielink, a joint venture between colleges and universities, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Cultural Affairs and Science, the HBO-Raad (Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences), VSNU (Association of Universities in the Netherlands) and DUO (Education Executive Agency), was faced with the challenge of introducing a management information platform for the sector-wide registration process for colleges and universities. The changes in the form and content of education, in students’ approaches to their studies and in regulations from the government all demanded ongoing innovation within higher education. Studielink encourages this innovation through collaboration and standardization, all the while preserving the autonomy of the individual institutions. An example of promoting collaboration through innovation is the standardization of the registration process for higher education students, involving some 650,000 registrations annually.

SunOpta, a leader in the natural and organic foods and natural health products markets, faced challenges in reporting and data analysis due to rapid growth and acquisitions. The company lacked overall visibility into companywide sales, finance, and operations. It also struggled to quickly integrate data from newly acquired or existing business units with differing enterprise software systems for shareholder reporting and strategic planning purposes. SunOpta needed to upgrade its existing disparate BI and reporting solutions, including Oracle BIEE, to maximize profitability with a daily view of gross profit performance and reduce inventory exposure and related costs.

Superior Graphite, a chemical manufacturer specializing in high-temperature technologies, advanced sizing, blending, and coating technologies, was facing challenges in developing data dashboards that would enable better decision-making at all levels. The company wanted to reduce the development costs of integrating a quality business intelligence software system and enhance the richness, accuracy, and usability of corporate data and corresponding data analysis. The company had previously spent a significant amount on consulting time, hardware, and software, but the project dragged on without any results. The company needed a solution that could provide fast access to in-depth data and analysis to improve response time, forecasting, and decision making.

Svedala Municipality was facing the challenge of controlling operating costs without jeopardizing service levels to constituents. They needed to analyze information from disparate data sources and deploy a solution that did not require support from expensive consultants. As a result of a major reorganization in the healthcare sector, managers with increased budget responsibility needed a tool that was easy to use. Previously, managers had been forced to manually print out and compare data from different systems to be able to review all costs associated with any given decision.

Swedbank, one of the largest financial institutions in Scandinavia and the Baltic states, needed to better support its 6,000+ branch employees and specialist head office and regionally-based marketing staff with customer-centric tools. The mission was to improve the sales support and give advisors an easy way to plan which customers to meet. The previous sales support tools were too complicated for most of the branch office users who were dependent on central and regional specialists from whom information could be ordered. The lack of system agility meant that opportunities were often missed. Swedbank saw this challenge as an opportunity for a paradigm shift. They saw potential for an entirely new user friendly and flexible system that put information, and thereby power, at everyone’s fingertips. They wanted to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and at the same time grow sales and revenue.

tesa tape, a leading manufacturer and distributor of pressure-sensitive adhesive tapes, was facing challenges in improving data accessibility to its Asia-Pacific subsidiaries and affiliates. The company wanted to enhance the usability of business data by integrating flexible, high-powered, multifunctional analysis tools. They also aimed to reduce the time and manpower required to develop practical, visual reports. The company had implemented a Navision ERP system, which provided new opportunities for automating information. However, the visual capabilities of the ERP system were limited, and the company was looking for a solution that could provide better visual reporting.

USS-POSCO was facing challenges in streamlining data reporting to improve decision-making speed and responsiveness to trends or problems. The company was heavily reliant on its overburdened IT staff for generating detailed data reports. The goal was to reduce the amount of time it took to answer business questions and move business analysis closer to end users. The company was looking for a solution that could quickly build a sound business intelligence system without heavy financial, time, or resource investment.

US Synthetic, a leading provider of polycrystalline diamond cutters (PDCs) for oil and gas exploration, faced challenges in reporting and analysis. The company's Made2Manage ERP system and internally developed custom tables contained large amounts of detailed data, but employees were not able to utilize that data in a meaningful way. Even the generic reports within Made2Manage were difficult to access, and creating ad hoc reports was even more time-consuming and inefficient. The company needed a solution that would provide real, accessible, and useful information at all levels within the organization. The company's non-linear floor made it challenging for managers to follow the product from work order to delivery. Because products may backtrack in the process flow and ultimately take a different route to completion, production managers were losing visibility of those products and their status.

Vax, a leading manufacturer and distributor of high-quality floorcare products, was facing challenges in producing sales and call centre performance analysis, monitoring supply chain freight movements, and delivering business intelligence (BI) in a visual context for users. The company lacked any specific software for business discovery and was making use of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. The need for a more efficient and effective solution led to the acquisition of the QlikView business discovery platform in 2006. The initial goal was to track and drive sales and margin performance while helping to control expenses and overall operating costs.

Visionlab, a leading optical company in Spain, was facing challenges in extracting key indicators in real time, detecting bottlenecks, and improving the output of production processes. The company also wanted to decentralize data management across various areas. As the organization grew, system managers realized that using Microsoft Excel would be inadequate for optimal decision-making. In 2003, Visionlab decided to implement QlikView, a BI solution that they considered visual, easy to implement, and with a quick return on investment thanks to its short learning curve.

Wegter, a non-food wholesaler, was facing several challenges. They needed a faster business analysis for their customers and a reduction in the time it took to generate reports on licensing and royalty agreements. Their customers were also demanding more detailed reports on available inventory, delivery schedules, and royalties. The company was using different packages to retrieve data, organize it, and present it, which was inefficient and time-consuming. They were also struggling to meet their customers' demand for a delivery reliability rate of more than 92 percent.

TWG, a leading food and beverages supplier in Hong Kong, was struggling with inefficient reporting processes that delayed decision-making. The company was using their legacy SAP ERP system to produce sales and CRM reports, but found it difficult to generate meaningful insights from the data. The process was manual and could take several hours to extract the data and then generate a report for management using Microsoft PowerPoint. This inefficiency was hindering the company's ability to make strategic decisions and maintain its market leader status.

Veritix’s transactional database was used for both production purposes and reporting. As a result, it wasn’t optimized for analytics and performance was a concern. Running analytics on the production machine would have overwhelmed system resources. Rojas’ team decided to create a separate data warehouse which would store a decade of event data, as well as additional information to enrich analyses such as weather, drive times, and fan income. The project goals were twofold: to develop a high-performance analytics data warehouse and to tune the existing production database for transactions. Veritix was primarily using Oracle, but they also had some Microsoft SQL Server databases. As they looked to expand their data warehouse, they performed a cost analysis of a traditional, on-premises data warehouse and found that it would cost millions to achieve the performance levels that they required.

The Ottawa Paramedic Service was facing challenges with its static and siloed data. The service was relying on a reactive dispatch procedure for proactive care, which was not efficient. Hospitals had little access to information about when ambulances would be arriving, what injuries the patient had sustained, and what treatment had already been provided by paramedics. This lack of information led to a manual process susceptible to delays. With millions of rows of data being generated every week, the Ottawa Paramedic Service knew they could do more than plan for the next 24-hour period. They needed a way to improve patient response times, and effectively plan resourcing availability.

Travis Perkins, a British builders’ merchant and home improvement retailer, was facing a significant challenge due to the presence of many data silos within its operations. These data silos made it difficult for the company to quickly access a single truth, leading to inefficiencies and potential inaccuracies in decision-making. The company needed a solution that would allow both internal users and external suppliers to have fast access to the same information, thereby improving operational efficiency and accuracy.

Calltech, a provider of computer telephony integration and media management solutions, was facing the challenge of providing its customers with the ability to report beyond traditional operational contact center management KPIs. They needed a solution that would allow their customers to drill down, analyze, and understand their data. Additionally, they wanted to retain their cutting-edge position in the market without diverting resources to build a solution that already exists in the market. They also wanted a solution that would be user-friendly and would be quickly adopted by their customers.

Xn protel, a global provider of business-critical applications for the hotel and leisure sector, was looking to leverage and integrate key hotel subsystems into one synthesized dashboard. They wanted to transform their business intelligence tool into a true end-to-end solution, which would open access to a new global user base. The challenge was to provide significant cost savings and increased service levels to their customers.

Namaste Direct, a non-profit organization, was struggling with data management. They were dealing with mountains of paper records and had to manually transfer data into Excel spreadsheets for analysis. This process was time-consuming and prone to errors. When they received large requests with strict deadlines, such as pulling data on 50 clients’ businesses for a report due the next day, it was stressful and challenging. They needed a data analytics platform that could streamline their operations and provide clear, actionable data quickly and accurately.