Old Fashioned Foods savours the rewards of unlocking new business insights
An iconic New Zealand food production company now has powerful business intelligence capability on its plate thanks to iQ4bis...
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Old Fashioned Foods Group, an iconic New Zealand food production company known for its Aunt Betty’s Pudding, has taken a far-from-oldfashioned approach to business intelligence technology. With close to 90 percent share of the New Zealand steamed puddings market and a significant and growing export market, OFF is experiencing rapid growth through expanded sales. The company’s implementation of iQ4bis has given decision-makers a real-time view of key metrics within the company and helps them react quickly to changes in the marketplace. Additionally, by adding iQ4bis as the access portal to their extensive database resources, Old Fashioned Foods (OFF) has been able to significantly extend the life of their legacy ERP systems and avoid costly re-engineering. But the key driver behind the company’s adoption of iQ4bis as the front end BI tool for executives within OFF was its acquisition of Hansells, another leading food manufacturer with familiar household names. “When we acquired Hansells we found we had two parallel supply chain and financial systems,” says Mary Lumgair, Microsoft Dynamics AX project manager at OFF. “Plus we were setting up a third facility in Australia and had to get a system up and running there. Hansells in Masterton was running an IBM mainframe-based System 21 / GEAC ERP solution while our factory in New Lynn operated a highly customised PCS MRP interfaced with Sybiz financial package. Our task was to be able to integrate the data from both systems so that we could use it more effectively while maintaining the investments that we’d made in existing systems,” she says. “Our first step was to standardise on Microsoft SQL Server as our data warehouse and Microsoft Dynamics – AX as our ERP platform. That allowed us to bring some order to our backend databases. But we were still in the same situation in that we needed an easy-to-use front end that would give management a daily snapshot of the business for enhanced decision-making, give analysts key metrics for strategic planning and give the production, sales and marketing team enough information to manage their day-today activities." “We knew what we wanted,” Lumgair adds, “but was there the solution that would fulfil our needs? We looked briefly at other systems but the data models and reporting capabilities were not flexible enough to fully satisfy our requirements. Then we heard about iQ4bis from HP, one of our IT partners. “We talked to a few other Microsoft Dynamics AX / iQ4bis installations like Frucor and Bell Tea and the more we heard the better it sounded.” "iQ4bis could address everything on our wish list and, from all reports, was flexible, easy-to-use and the pricing was well within our budget. Our only concern was it sounded too good to be true.” What convinced OFF that iQ4bis could deliver was the demonstration. “Mary and the management team at OFF were very specific in what they wanted to see,” says Sunesh Samarasinghe, general manager of iQ4bis - APAC, “so that made our job so much easier. We showed them how easy it was to pull information out of the data warehouse, how they could create their own personal views, how easy it was to make queries and how easy it was to create and share reports. That’s what they asked for and that’s what we showed.” “iQ4bis provides the information reporting that we need,” says Ross MacKenzie, CEO of Old Fashioned Foods Group. “We could see the value of improving the access to up-to-date information across the whole business and made the decision quickly to engage with iQ4bis. We have not regretted the decision.” Implementing iQ4bis went very well. “Their data was quite clean,” says Manu Ikkala, senior consultant at iQ4bis, “which made the entire process go extremely well. There were a few null fields in some of the data sets, but one of the benefits of iQ4bis is that it highlights these issues and allows the database people to enhance the accuracy and completeness of the data. They had already started to build cubes for analysis so we even had a head start when setting up the templates. Manu and the team from iQ4bis have been very helpful at all stages of implementation,” says Lumgair. “In essence, they completed the first cube – for sales – to get us started. Then they worked alongside us and we built the second cube together, giving us valuable skills as we take on more development responsibilities. We’re in the process of evaluating which additional cubes we’ll need and fully expect to be able to build them with minimal input from the iQ4bis team.” Already the iQ4bis solution has paid dividends. “By implementing iQ4bis we have been able to extend the life of our current legacy systems and continue to leverage all of the database procedures that have been refined over the years,” says Lumgair. “This means that we can focus on moving forward on new initiatives rather than having to re-invent what we’ve already developed.” OFF’s sales management is now much more efficient with iQ4bis. “Being able to track sales performance by month, year-to-date, region, category and sales person across our entire organisation has been a tremendous benefit for us,” says Thys Van Lingen, sales and marketing manager at OFF. “With iQ4bis, I can measure performance against quotas and make adjustments as necessary. We can email reports to the sales team and the territory managers use iQ4bis to help them track our sales incentive initiatives.” “Before iQ4bis,” continues Van Lingen, “we had to use a combination of pivot and OLAP reports that were generated on a monthly or weekly basis. While the information was comprehensive, it was difficult to compare and contrast the numbers. Now, we can see the key metrics on one screen in near real-time. Margin analysis is now much easier for Thys. “iQ4bis helps us plan how we structure our margins,” he says. “With iQ4bis, I can drill down into the numbers and get a much better perspective on performance. This enables me to make more informed decisions and identify any patterns that might affect future sales.” For more information contact
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