Häfele NZ turns data into information with a few clicks
Architectural hardware distributor Häfele NZ used to struggle with tracking sales across its broad product range. Then the company discovered QlikView, a highly flexible reporting and analysis tool…
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Häfele is a Germany-based international importer and distributor of architectural hardware with 38 subsidiaries around the world. The company sets itself apart from its competitors with its comprehensive product ranges and creative marketing channels. The company’s local subsidiary, Häfele NZ, has long relied on a ERP system running under the SCO Unix operating system to track and manage sales activity across a very broad product range consisting of around 35,000 line items. While the Unix system continues to act as a reliable data platform, general manager Michael Farrugia says that getting useful information out of the system was “a very convoluted process.” “Only a couple of people in the company knew how to do it. Once we had got the information out, displaying it in a readable form was another thing altogether.” Farrugia had already decided that the business needed more transparency, particularly in its sales tracking, when he was introduced to Raul Schleier of Visual Intelligence. Visual Intelligence is the New Zealand distributor of QlikView, a highly flexible reporting and analysis tool. Schleier says the Unix environment posed no problems at all for QlikView. “Any system where you have data in a structured form QlikView can get it out. In this case it happened to be an old Unix system but the program can work with a wide range of formats.” So confident was Schleier that QlikView was the right solution for Häfele, that he offered to implement a limited installation of the product on a trial basis. “The agreement was that if it didn’t work, we could walk away free of any charges,” says Farrrugia. But it soon became apparent that QlikView was the ideal tool for Häfele NZ’s needs. The company started to use QlikView to analyse and monitor all aspects of sales, but the package was soon being used for logistics analysis, credit analysis and it is also used to prepare a wide range of IT statistics. “With a few clicks we can see anything about the business and how it’s travelling,” says Farrugia. “It would take me an hour to go through all of the things that the package does for us, but one of the most dramatic improvements is in the sales department. With QlikView they can see exactly what they have achieved and what they need to achieve to meet their targets.” QlikView works both on-line and off line which means that Häfele employees can access all their reports from a web browser when connected to the Häfele intranet. However, when the sales reps go out on the road they always take their QlikView database with them off-line, which means that they have full access to all sales statistics down to individual invoice line level. Even though the company’s ERP system consists of gigabytes of data, the patented method by which QlikView stores data means that the sales file database takes up less than 30Mb. Farrugia says that building new QlikView applications is so quick and easy that all development and maintenance work is carried out ‘in house.’ The package has proved to be so successful that QlikView is now being used by other subsidiaries within the global Häfele organization. Häfele NZ was the pioneer, then came Australia, India, and Thailand. The head office in Germany now depends on QlikView and more Häfele subsidiaries are likely to come on board. “It’s been a fantastic tool for our business,” says Farrugia. “I couldn’t see how we could do without it now.” For more information please contact |
October 2007
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