Posted by Noel Shannon on Fri, Aug 20, 2010 @ 03:36 AM
Most business intelligence tools are good at answering the first question someone might ask, such as “What are my best selling products?” or “Who are my top customers?” or “What are the sales trends for my products or customers?” Some BI tools go a little further to provide clever ways of visualizing answers to questions like these.
Answering the initial question is not all that difficult, as evidenced by the number of tools that can do it. The tough part is answering the subsequent question based on the answer to the first question, and then the third and fourth questions, and so on. I'm not talking just about drilling down, which while useful does not go far enough. The greater difficulty is making it possible for business people to answer any question they come up with in highly intuitive and interactive way.
I talked about this with QlikTech’s market intelligence manager, Tim Brain. He walked through a scenario showing how QlikView is designed to do just this: answer the unpredictable questions.
Imagine you’re a marketing analyst who wants to understand where to focus your promotional efforts. The first question you want to answer is, “What have been my most profitable products so far in 2010?” Next, you want to understand which customers are buying these products. As you think it through you realize that what you really want to know is which customers are not buying them. You click your way through a QlikView document. You come up with another question: “Which of those customers who aren't buying our most profitable products have been active buyers in the last two months?” And there you have it: your list of customers to target in a marketing campaign.
Using insights gleaned in QlikView, you can begin putting together a campaign to target specifically those customers who are active buyers but who are not buying the products you need them to be buying. QlikView helped you find not just the associated data (highlighted in white), but the unassociated data (highlighted in gray).
The really useful answer is rarely the initial one provided by a report or a specific piece of analysis. We’re not talking about a drill path; rather, we’re talking about a series of related questions based on a set of data associations. With Qlikview, data associations persist as the user conducts analysis. QlikView works the way your mind works. It’s intuitive and supports the natural flow of the insight discovery process, answering not just the obvious questions, but the unobvious questions as well.
QlikPower is an implementation partner for QlikView. If you would like to find out how QlikPower can help you fill out the form here.
Reproduced from QlikView's Blogroll
Posted by Noel Shannon on Thu, Aug 19, 2010 @ 04:58 AM
QlikTech today announced successful enterprise deployments of QlikView business intelligence software by VIP Parts, Tires & Service, the largest privately owned automotive aftermarket retail chain in New England. VIP’s business footprint spans wholesale, fleet and commercial divisions, as well as 56 retail stores. Using QlikView to integrate, analyze and search millions of transactions from operational and POS (Point of Sale) systems across locations, VIP moved from green-bar and spreadsheet reporting to real-time operational scorecards and holistic, multi-level views of business performance, improving management controls and response to business issues.
VIP recognized a need to embrace an enterprise-wide business intelligence system that could reach the furthest parts of its organization and bring data from multiple departments and sources together into a single solution. After an exhaustive search, VIP selected QlikView based on its ease of use, pre-integrated tools such as ETL (Extract, Transform and Load), and the ability to provide web-based access to data search, analysis and reporting throughout the company.
“Our CEO became one of the biggest fans of QlikView because it allowed him to drill down through corporate data right to the SKU level. District managers are thrilled to now have access to the same performance-based reports that they can share with store-level executives,” said Dan Grosz, the company’s VP of Information Systems.
VIP rolled out its first QlikView dashboards focusing on store operations in only a few weeks and achieved all its initial goals in just nine months, covering functional areas such as:
- Executive Analysis, increasing C-level visibility of operational KPIs by consolidating data from all parts of the company into a single QlikView
- Sales Analysis, leveraging POS data in new ways such as ranking sales by vehicle type down to SKU level
- Marketing Analysis, aligning merchandising and dealer services with customer purchasing patterns
- Operational Analysis, tracking store performance down to technician level
- Supply Chain Analysis, tracking inventory turns and Gross Margin Return on Investment (GMROI) down to SKU level (Prior to QlikView, calculating inventory turns was a slow, laborious process that limited calculations to only “buckets” of parts and tires. GMRO couldn’t even be calculated.)
- Payroll Analysis, consolidating payroll reporting and managing payroll performance from an enterprise view.
With QlikView, VIP drill down into detailed customer buying patterns and company performance across their wholesale and dealer businesses any way they want. Operational scorecards with data views matched to the specific needs of each end user provide the ability to set goals, quickly identify problems and track progress against them.
About VIP Parts, Tires & Service
VIP Parts, Tires & Service is New England’s largest privately held automotive parts and accessories chain. Based in Lewiston, Maine, VIP has 56 stores in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts and a business footprint spanning retail, wholesale, fleet and commercial divisions. Since 1958, VIP has been the place where New Englanders turn for everything they need to keep their vehicles running at peak performance. VIP is staffed with ASE Certified technicians and counter personnel seven days a week and is the only New England resource for high quality, name-brand original equipment parts, tires and repair services. The company backs its prices with a 200% price guarantee and offers lifetime warranties on parts and labor
QlikPower is an implementation partner for QlikView. If you would like to find out how QlikPower can help you fill out the form here.
Posted by Noel Shannon on Tue, Aug 17, 2010 @ 10:20 AM
Performance management includes activities to ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on the performance of an organization, a department, employee, or even the processes to build a product or service, as well as many other areas.
The problem is that most organisations only pay lip service to Performance Management. That is to say that even if they have some form of Performance Management it is not widely known in the organisation and only a few people have access to it. In other words it is not transparent. In a survey of top businesses conducted by QlikTech in the UK it was found that only 12.7% had implemented a 'Transparent' Performance Management system.
The benefits of Performance Management are very well known and are particularly relevant in difficult times. Getting everone in the organisation involved in measuring the impact of decisions on the relevant metrics and seeing the effects immediately is clearly beneficial - it just needs decent tools to allow this to happen rapidly and without too much expenditure.
So how to get started - well one way might be to set up a cross sectional group say between Finance and Operations, decide on relevant metrics that can measure the impact of different decisions on the overall company performance, get the data and build a dashboard using QlikView then start monitoring performance on a daily basis as the data changes. This could be known as a Performance Managemant Hub.
A Performance Management Hub - also known as a Business Performance Hub (BPH) requires three fundamental ingredients:
1. A team of motivated, accountable people
2. An enabling technology which promotes accountability through visibility
3. And a fast, straightforward method of implementing improvement projects.
Gartner, QlikView, Accountancy Age and Financial Director are teaming up to deliver the latest thinking in Performance Management at an exclusive one-day event. The free presentation will enable selected leading organisations to unlock the productivity potential in their workforce and change behaviour by implementing a Business Performance Hub. Register now to attend this event.
Posted by Ray Malendewicz on Wed, Aug 04, 2010 @ 10:01 AM
From my last blog these are the reasons why a Business Intelligence project fails.
- There is no executive support.
- It is not easy to use.
There is poor IT support.
Let’s now look at why these Business Intelligence projects succeed. The obvious conclusion is that if you get Executive support, make it easy to use and give excellent IT support any Business Intelligence project will succeed.
In order to make sure that your Business Intelligence project is successful adhere to the following simple rules.
1st Rule to a Successful Business Intelligence Project : Make sure that you have complete and unconditional Executive support. You will get this when you can demonstrate that there is a viable and timely Return on Investment and that, when delivered, it will provide an easy to use solution.
2nd Rule to a Successful Business Intelligence Project : Have a strong project team. This team must make sure that they can provide a solution in a timely manner that is consistent and relevant to the users. The team must be able to respond to user specification without being continually diverted by changes.
3rd Rule to a Successful Business Intelligence Project : Make sure that the users can respond and react to the information produced. Users need to be able to understand the results and be able to take actions.
4th Rule to a Successful Business Intelligence Project : Choose the right tool and partner. This would appear to be the most obvious part of any Business Intelligence project but there are lots of tools available and while many of them look great some of them can be quite expensive. Don’t believe just what you read in articles and reviews by Gartner, Forrester and others. Do some real research and test the products for flexibility and ease of use if you can. Make sure that the Partner you choose understands not only the product but also what you are trying to achieve.
We at QlikPower have over many years experience in helping customers identify requirements and choose the right tool. We have worked with lots of Business Intelligence solutions but are currently most associated with QlikView. This is because we can demonstrate our solution against you own data and thus show its capability to meet your requirements.
Watch our video on QlikView's In-Memory Advantage or visit us at QlikPower to find out more.
Posted by Ray Malendewicz on Thu, Jul 22, 2010 @ 12:08 PM
I read many articles and blogs related to Business Intelligence. Very often they are quite technical but one issue comes up regularly. That is – ‘Why do Business Intelligence projects fail?’
There are many articles that have reviewed this aspect of Business Intelligence and dozens of lists that go into some details of why they fail. When I reviewed as many as I could read it was clear that though they provide lots of lists they all came down to a few key elements.
From these lists the top three are:-
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There is no Executive support. Many consider this to be the most important aspect of any Business Intelligence project. If there is not active board level support for all stages of the project it will not be successful. A member of the senior management team must take responsibility for the project and manage the overall project to its conclusion.
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It is not easy to use. Users are not properly trained and do not understand what is being presented to them. Often this means that they think the data is wrong and they do not trust the information being given to them.
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There is poor IT support. Users need to have a direct link to IT support to ensure that issues are quickly resolved. This means that IT must have knowledge of the solution provide as well as the capability of the product itself.
I am not saying that if you address the above issues you will have a successful project but I would hope that you will have more chance of your Business Intelligence project working.
We at QlikPower worked very closely with our customers to ensure that Business Intelligence projects are successful. To find out more please go to our web site.
So much for the glass being half empty, the next blog will review why Business Intelligence projects succeed – the glass will be half full.
Posted by Ray Malendewicz on Thu, Jul 15, 2010 @ 03:20 AM
So the World Cup is over and I suppose that we will have to get back to doing some real work instead of being the ultimate fan by looking at the World Cup Qlikview application.
I learnt quite a lot from this Business Intelligence application about the World Cup. For example I did not know that the Dutch East Indies appeared in the tournament. They did so in 1938. Actually more surprising is that it was still a Dutch colony then and did not gain independence, as Indonesia, until after the Second World War in 1949. Other useless information includes the fact that the majority of goals were scored with right foot shots and that the majority of teams, excluding England, had more midfield players booked than defenders. I guess the conclusion form this is that most players are right footed and that defence begins in midfield.
I am confident that, given some time, I can develop some completely useless Key Performance indicators that someone at the Football Association could latch on to and use as measures of real importance to the future of English football.
I am really looking forward to QlikView offering the next application. Hopefully we will not have to wait until the European Nations cup in two years before we are able to waste a few precious hours in finding some useless, but interesting, facts.
Anyway enough of this rubbish. Let’s get back to the real world. Yesterday I posted a blog about providing PDF reports
from QlikView. This has always been a problem but one that QlikPower has provided a neat solution. It will allow you to provide attractive reports without having to use Excel.
To find out more contact QlikPower through our web page and we can show you how it is done using your data.
Posted by Ray Malendewicz on Mon, Jul 12, 2010 @ 04:20 AM
QlikView has rich, flexible analytical capabilities, fast drill-down and appealing visualisation, but it is often easy to forget the people at the "sharp end" - the salesperson, the ops manager, the account manager - all of whom would love to have time to explore and analyse data, but who need a simple, electronic or paper-based report to work from.
It's surprising how many QlikView users still revert to the "export to Excel and email" option, when faced with distributing data to the front line.
QlikView has the ability to produce easy to use, fast, banded, automated reports is often forgotten during the development phase of the rather more exciting on-screen dashboard model.
QlikView offers a solution, giving its customers the power to automatically band and distribute PDF reports to pre-determined
lists of email recipients, at set times and days, allowing you to get the right information in front of the right people, in time for them to react.
Our solution is easy to implement, can be used with all your existing reports and models, expanding functionality without disruption to your day-to-day operations.
Download your free personalized QlikView Edition Now!
Posted by Ray Malendewicz on Tue, Jun 29, 2010 @ 06:54 AM
So, after wiping away my tears after the terrible performance by England in the World Cup, perhaps now is the time to consider the Key Performance Indicators for the next England manager. This, of course, assumes that Fabio Capello does the right thing and resigns.
I think that it is important to consider the Key Performance Indicators that should be set for the new manager. Using the criteria that they should be quantifiable measurements, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of an organization and its objectives it is time that the Football Association come up with some useful KPIs. From this they can then carry out some reasonable business analysis to measure the success or, more likely, the failure of the new manager.
The most obvious Key Performance Indicator should be results. 
This is too simple unless it includes measure such as the quality of the opposition. Thus a win against San Moreno is of less value than one against Spain.
More difficult, but just as important, will be the quality of the team. This could include measures such as time of possession, passes completed and shots on goal. It will mean that targets for improvements could be made for each measure.
Another Key Performance Indicator might be team selection and motivation. This will be much more difficult to measure but could include player ratings. It would mean that should a player receive a rating of say six or less out of ten then he would be considered either out of position or not fully motivated.
Analysing and reporting against these Key Performance indicators might help us get a better England manager or, at least, get rid of him before things get really bad.
We at QlikPower put a lot of thought into Key Performance indicators and the analysis required to report on them. We work closely with our customers to produce Key Performance indicators which appropriate to their business. Please contact us if you want to know more.
If you are still interested in the World Cup, though I can't think why, you can become a world master of football facts by looking at the instant tournament insight developed in Qlikview.
Kick it & Qlik it App - free!
Posted by Noel Shannon on Thu, Jun 24, 2010 @ 05:50 AM
I attended a really excellent Sales Directors Forum last week
and it really woke me up to the demand out there in so many organisations for better data analysis. The organisers from
Treacy Consulting did a superb job in getting over 30 Sales Managers and Sales Directors from different organisations to meet to discuss the challenges facing them as we get through the recession. Among the topics discussed were their responses to the following questions
1. Do you expect a year on year increase in sales for 2010?
2. How has your sales headcount changed in the last 2 years?
3. What sales team headcount are you predicting for the next 12 months?
4. Does your company forecast an increase in bad debt provision/ collection for the next 12 months ?
In their responses to the questionnaire, which had been filled out in advance, the attendees had indicated that they were spending money on CRM systems (50%), Search Engine Optimisation (50%), and Blogging & Social Media (68%). But when the discussion started I was fascinated to note that many wanted better and faster data analysis to be made available to them for immediate decision making in so many different areas.
Value versus Volume
A large Drinks Manufacturer wanted better Key Performance Indicator (KPI) measurement to determine what product mix they should be promoting. He pointed out that in difficult times we need better data and data analysis so that we can understand how to grow value when we cannot grow volume. In order to do this we need to better understand the Promotional Mix and this is driven by Customer Insight. ‘Promotions that are not measured are a waste of money’ he said. Their product is the same drink but packaged and promoted in different ways. They have a large family pack, different size bottles and cans, different adverts and promotions and so on. There is obviously a different cost profile associated with the different product mixes and so the challenge is to better understand the value that can be extracted from promoting the optimal mix. This can only be done by constantly measuring the demand at a granular level and delivering this information accurately and in an intuitive way so that the decision makers can do a better job. For this to be done they would need better Key Performance Indicators and better data analysis.
Business Intelligence
QlikView is the Business Intelligence solution for this. Demand can be tracked over time – different outlets will have different social groupings and age profiles – these can be measured and mapped against the demand for the different products and for different time frames, even for different hours in the day. The Point of Sale system can deliver the information from all the outlets and this can be fed directly into
QlikView. Using its powerful associative software
QlikView can instantly analyse and show trends – and more importantly it can alert the user to unusual patterens and even predict future demand.
Posted by Ray Malendewicz on Wed, Jun 23, 2010 @ 04:48 AM
The objective of a Key Performance Indicator is to provide a tool to measure capability and, as a result of actions, improve the company.
Some while ago I worked for a software company that sold an application that included “Managerial Bench strength” as a Key Performance Indicator. It became quite a talking point because it created a lot of interest amongst our prospects and it sounded as if it could be valuable.
On the surface, this Key Performance Indicator appears to be related to the skills of a manager and if you carried out a Google search on it you would find that it is often used as a recruitment tool. In this case it is to identify skills and capabilities that are required in people you want to employ.
In fact the objective of this particular Key Performance indicator is to ensure that there are enough appropriately skilled people to move into managerial positions in the future. Its objective is to identify gaps in the future management of an organisation. It includes such measures as skill set, education and training undertaken amongst others. From this information it would be possible, using a Business Intelligence reporting tool to identify staff, who with appropriate training, could fill the gap.
As a talking point it was great as it would make people sit up and think that we really understood some key aspects of their business. As a Key Performance indicator it was rarely, if ever, used because it was too complicated to measure and rarely provided an indicator that was meaningful and could easily be measured.
This made me think of all the Key Performance indicators that are being used today. I am sure that some of you are suffering from over complicated measures that are very difficult to understand and make any improvements.
I would be really interested to hear from anyone suffering from too many or too complicated Key Performance Indicators. If I receive enough I will share them, without mentioning the organisation name, with you. I look forward to hearing from you.
If you would like to see some Key Performance Indicators and QlikView in action, try our World Cup App.