Crown Worldwide Group, a global logistics company, was using a mix of BusinessObjects and home-grown software for business intelligence analysis and reporting. However, they needed to supplement BusinessObjects with a dashboard solution to make business intelligence more easily accessible to branch managers throughout the company. The solution needed to enable managers to easily explore information that is relevant to them visually. The company was finding that BusinessObjects required a lot of upfront work, new reports took a lot of IT time to produce and their business leaders were demanding dashboard business intelligence tools. They researched and considered Qlikview, BusinessObjects Crystal Exelsius dashboards and other available solutions in the market.

DAKOTACARE, a healthcare leader in South Dakota, manages hundreds of millions of records on subscribers and providers, from coverage to codes to claims. The company was data-rich but information-poor, with staff having to rely on IT for custom reports that would address internal reporting as well as questions from healthcare providers and clients. Their requests were placed in a queue, then prioritized, with the resulting reports coming days or even sometimes weeks later. Much of their information needs were time-sensitive, and by the time people got their questions answered, they no longer needed the information. Representatives would not even ask for data requests knowing that their information needs would not be met prior to a decision deadline. Or, intrepid representatives would try to extrapolate answers on their own, often with varying results.

Deroma, a leading global manufacturer of industrial terra cotta products, was facing challenges in tracking production across the nine companies that make up the Deroma Group. The company needed a solution that could streamline management data and use it constructively in an easy-to-use format. The company's products are distributed by six marketing subsidiaries in Europe, the United States, and China and can be found in all major DIY chains and over 8,000 Garden Centers around the world. With over 2,000 employees and €100 million in revenue, the company needed a robust solution to manage its complex operations.

Devon and Cornwall Police were facing challenges with their previous performance management system, Northgate Information Solutions, which was incapable of meeting the needs of the Force for granular and easily accessible information. The system was outdated and had a disjointed approach between different information systems with no joined up approach for data manipulation, data table amalgamation or presentation. The Force needed a solution that could improve resource allocation, offer better support for intelligence-led policing, and improve information flow between the police and the community.

Diakonhjemmet Sykehus, a private, non-profit hospital in Oslo, Norway, was struggling to meet regulatory reporting requirements on quality statistics. Their existing systems could only export data files that had to be manipulated within Microsoft Excel to generate basic analysis. This process was time-consuming and did not provide much visibility into the underlying data. The hospital was also facing issues with employee absenteeism and patient admittance scheduling failures. They needed a solution that could handle the complex needs of a hospital without being too costly or resource-intensive.

Eden Park, a sportswear brand, was facing limitations with its traditional BI tool acquired in 2002. The tool was no longer meeting the needs of the purchasing, sales, production, and management controlling departments. They were only using 20% of the product for their analyses and reporting, and spending 80% of their time reprocessing the data in Excel. The company was looking for a solution that was fast to implement, easy to manage, and truly effective. The challenge was to meet the evolving needs of management controlling.

Emons Spedition, a transportation and logistics company, was facing several challenges. They needed to optimize transport by conducting a detailed analysis of dispatch and merchandise structures. They wanted to identify the links between weight, volume, and timing with reference to price. They also required greater cost transparency. The manual evaluations based on the Euromistral ERP system were too laborious and time-consuming, making it difficult for them to achieve their goals.

Feed The Children, an international, nonprofit relief organization, was already using QlikView for its commodities tracking system. However, the system was not being used to its fullest potential. The organization was facing challenges in improving efficiency in gaining access to system data, gaining visibility into donor behavior, and increasing efficiencies in supply chain. The organization annually distributes more than 111 million pounds of food and other essentials to children and their families in the US and internationally, supplementing more than 760,000 meals each day. With such large volumes of goods moving through its six warehouses in the US, the non-profit relies on an in-house commodity tracking system to manage its supply chain from donors to recipients.

Fila Europe’s production is entrusted to outside suppliers, each with its own systems, in a variety of countries. Its worldwide sales group had difficulties pulling information from these various systems, as well as transmitting and exchanging information among the various sites. The company needed to improve data quality, ensuring that data could be accessed and analyzed, regardless where it resided. Fila Europe needed a flexible application that was simple to access and use for a wide range of people. And ultimately, the solution had to provide people with insight into corporate functions to better monitor their activities and optimize decisions throughout the company.

Frigoscandia Distribution, a leading logistics partner in the food industry, was facing several challenges. They wanted to increase control over accounts payable by providing customer-facing employees with accurate payment histories. They also aimed to streamline purchasing processes to lower purchasing costs and improve cash flow. Additionally, they needed to reconcile redundant and outdated data to improve operational efficiency. The company was looking for a solution that could help them achieve these goals and improve their overall business operations.

Fundesem Business School, a Spain-based institution with over 40 years of experience, faced a challenge in its growing student population, especially from abroad. The school needed to react faster and have key figures available on a daily basis to make decisions. The course of marketing campaigns was determined according to certain results indicators. Fundesem is figures-orientated and their entire business strategy is focused on this. They needed a tool that would provide them with turnover metrics within a day, rather than a week, which is what it used to take. The school wanted indicators to provide a performance evaluation by department as well as in line with the school’s overall strategy. From a strategic point of view, the challenge consisted in defining key indicators that would ensure that actions aligned with the school’s business strategy. And finally, Fundesem required a solution that was technically easy to use.

Hella Handel Austria, a leading worldwide partner of the automotive industry, was facing challenges with its data management. The company generates vast quantities of new data every day, with 45,000 active items, 900 active customers, and approximately 20,000 orders per month. To evaluate this data, the company needed a powerful analysis tool that would allow ad-hoc analyses of its extensive data inventory while conserving employee resources. Previously, only a few specially-trained Hella experts had suitable programming skills to evaluate the business data stored in the DB2 and Oracle databases. Several employees were busy almost full-time programming queries and manually processing the results in Excel or Access. The multitude of different tools and the high percentage of manual work meant that errors were inevitable.

HEAG Südhessische Energie (HSE), a major power sector enterprise, faced the challenge of analyzing sophisticated data structures in response to new, dynamic market requirements. The company needed an analytical solution that could evaluate all market and client data flexibly and quickly develop knowledge from the data. The company also had to deal with large volumes of data.

Instituto de Tecnologia Ceramica (ITC) was undergoing a transformation affecting its entire internal structure. The institute wanted to speed up all its systems, from decision making to the management of processes designed with its associates. This project became a high priority for management. The ITC needed to integrate all its information sources to allow data analysis based on scorecards, helping them to react in real time. Until QlikView was implemented, the ITC had no system for dynamic information management that could assist in analysing different key success factors and results. The ITC was looking for a business intelligence (BI) solution that would provide useful information in real time, with a commitment to user independence in accessing the data.

Instituto Policlínico La Rosaleda, one of the leading healthcare centres in northwest Spain, was facing challenges in managing and analyzing the vast amount of data generated in the hospital. The hospital had a powerful Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system in character mode in AS400, containing a large number of documents that were difficult to analyze, with a small IT department. The process of obtaining any kind of information was complicated and the hospital was excessively dependent on the IT department, which lacked the resources to deal with all the demands being made. The hospital needed a solution that could make information available quickly and consistently without reliance on the IT department, enabling rapid decision making.

Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT) is an international group of risk specialists and employee benefits consultants. The firm wanted to give its global executives access to real-time information on mobile devices to help them deliver great customer service. However, JLT needed to replace its existing business intelligence (BI) infrastructure and move away from its labour-intensive approach to business discovery. The company had a large data warehouse, but all of the analytics were pretty much after the event. Internal analysis at JLT took time and there was uncertainty about the accuracy of the findings. It led people to question what they were seeing. JLT wanted to adopt a more intuitive, real-time, graphical solution that better suited its global dynamic workforce and commitment to business transformation.

Karl’s Mega Sports, a leading sports and surf retailer in Victoria, Australia, recognized the need for increased efficiency, accountability, and control across the organization. This need extended from Point of Sale through to financials, sales, customer loyalty, inventory, and reporting. The company was seeking a solution that could provide comprehensive insights into these areas to drive performance and improve decision-making processes.

Kullenbergs Maskiner AB, one of Sweden’s largest distributors within the agricultural business, was struggling with a manual information reporting process. The company was unable to efficiently analyze the large volume of data from its warehouse, which contained almost 100,000 different articles. This was a significant challenge as the organization was not capable of analyzing all the reports manually. The company was also reliant on outside vendors for system maintenance and modifications, which was not ideal. The company needed a solution that could automate the data analysis process, increase operational efficiency, and reduce reliance on outside vendors.

La Mancha Resources Australia, a gold mining company, was facing several challenges. The month-end and year-end reporting process was time-consuming, and there was little transparency on the allocation of costs. Some departments were not fully utilizing the existing systems. The company had implemented an ERP system in 2009 to track and report on company data. However, they wanted to leverage their data to enable decision-making through reporting and analytics. They began evaluating several data extraction and reporting tools.

Lannoo Group Publishers, a publishing house specializing in non-fiction books and stationery, was facing challenges in data collection, analysis, and report generation. The existing Baan ERP system was slow and produced very basic reports that often raised new questions. To answer these questions, a programmer had to be called in each time, which was not efficient. The Oracle database contained seventeen gigabytes of data and it took the system at least fifteen minutes to produce statistics for any given year. The company was looking for a Business Intelligence (BI) package that could provide more insight into sales, customer, and item information.

Malmö University Hospital was facing challenges in managing patient waiting times and deviations. The hospital needed to gain increased control of the flow of patients. There was a need to find a cost-effective and powerful solution that allowed analysis of information from the many different systems. The Eye Clinic at Malmö University Hospital was working on how to correctly prioritize patients in terms of referral management and thereby increase accessibility. Their goal was to make a patient’s path through the healthcare process as quick and easy as possible. The clinic had problems with managing waiting times and deviations and the management needed to gain increased control of the flow of patients.

Mitsubishi Electric Cooling and Heating Solutions (MEUS) faced a significant challenge in reporting due to the scattered source data across multiple systems and sub-systems. These systems included SAP, SalesLogix, the company’s website CMS, and a homegrown training management system. The process of compiling a basic sales report took 20 to 40 hours a month, involving the exportation of SAP reports to Excel and manual consolidation of fragmented data from various other systems. This not only resulted in lost time but also a lack of visibility into sales, training, and customer service opportunities. MEUS needed a solution that could consolidate data from all its enterprise software and homegrown systems and run powerful reports in a fraction of the time currently required for reporting.

Panasonic Netherlands was in need of an easy-to-use management reporting system that could be used in conjunction with their ERP system. The existing system was cumbersome and time-consuming, requiring a significant amount of effort to extract, organize, and present information. Additionally, the system did not provide on-screen information, resulting in a large amount of paper waste. The company's managers also needed on-demand information to respond adequately to the market and make informed decisions. The existing tools were not sufficient for these needs, prompting the search for a professional Business Intelligence (BI) solution.

PC Electric, a manufacturer of industrial plugs, sockets, and small distributors, was seeking a flexible business intelligence (BI) solution that could adapt to the dynamically changing conditions of day-to-day business. The company wanted to be able to incorporate internal and external data sources without having to rely on IT experts. They also wanted a solution that could be expanded to meet future reporting and business analysis needs. Furthermore, they did not want to get involved in a complex BI project requiring a month of preparation. Instead, they sought an easily understandable and easy-to-use tool that could be quickly installed and quickly offer palpable results.

Pernod Ricard España, a leader in the liquor market in Spain, was facing challenges in generating flexible and dynamic reports due to the large amount of data handled by the company. The company needed a tool that could integrate multiple data sources in different formats and make them readily available to directors and department heads to streamline the decision-making process. This needed to be done independently of the IT department, so that end-users would be able to handle their own queries and reports.

Procurement Lincolnshire, a shared service partnership between eight local authorities in the East Midlands, wanted to respond to the need for efficiency savings by analysing its expenditure in more detail than ever before. They decided to improve its visibility over procurement activity with a new software platform to help meet the budget reduction targets posed by the government Comprehensive Spending Review in 2010. The procurement activities under scrutiny already cover around 30 categories. They range from reviews of high spending services, such as adult social care and children services, to outlays on photocopiers, pest control, and even dog kennelling. The challenge was finding a user friendly dashboard solution to access customised data mining reports for a more holistic view of the organisation spend.

Reynolds Porter Chamberlain (RPC), a leading UK law firm, was seeking to upgrade its IT infrastructure and software to ensure business excellence and provide its partners and lawyers with the best tools for their jobs. The firm recognized the need for a more astute use of technology to enhance their knowledge management functions, especially in the face of tightening internal corporate legal budgets. RPC wanted a business intelligence tool to create a support service to help lawyers and partners view, analyze, and interact with data about legal matters and monitor financial performance more transparently and effectively. Senior staff at RPC were also expressing frustrations with their previous ways of working with matter management. They wanted a more understandable way of examining the figures in the accounting system and to interpret whether particular matters they were handling were financially managed correctly.

Roland Scandinavia A/S, a leading distributor of musical instruments and large-format color printers in the Nordic countries, was struggling with managing a rapidly increasing volume of data from procurement, storage, and sales. The company had invested in the ERP system Scala to help create the needed overview, but it soon became obvious that it was difficult to draw out useful data. The manual reports in different systems were not providing the necessary insights and the company was in need of a solution that could provide a comprehensive overview of the company data.

Ruffer LLP, an investment management firm with 85 staff and just under £4.5 billion in funds under management, was facing challenges with their data management and analysis activities. They were heavily reliant on large internal spreadsheets for MIS, which were increasingly time-consuming and resource-intensive to manage. The firm wanted to move away from this 'spreadsheet mentality' that is common in many businesses. Additionally, the disparate data sources were making it difficult for Ruffer staff to update data and check for errors. This cumbersome data management was leading to concerns about potential inaccuracies, a problem Ruffer was determined to avoid.

sahibinden.com, Turkey’s largest e-trade platform, was facing challenges in managing high volume data and reducing the time taken for queries. The company needed a solution that could manage data control and calculations from a single centre and could be deployed quickly and cost-effectively. The company was looking for a business intelligence (BI) solution that could provide detailed analyses, such as visitors’ activities, options, and preferences, to make the website more efficient and profitable.