Because much of Express Data's inventory was ordered from offshore, shifting exchange rates meant stock unsold for longer than 90 days was having a detrimental impact on its bottom line.

Clearly, Express Data needed business intelligence.

In spite of having the data resources to quantify business intelligence, Express Data still relied on 'gut feel' when it came to buying patterns of customers and understanding the various trading segments.

Although the company had developed extensive data libraries, resident on a Microsoft SQL Server platform, for sales, inventory, financials, CRM and more, these databases represented a potentially valuable, but untapped, resource for business intelligence.

As a distributor, Express Data has a proven track record of delivering market-leading solutions to a wide variety of channel partners. The company is focused on delivering best of breed products for networking, security, software licensing, thin-client and storage.

In Australia, the company has its headquarters and distribution centre in Sydney and state offices in Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. Express Data New Zealand has offices in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. 

"Our sales people needed tools to help them accurately assess the needs and buying habits of their key customers and targets," says Ian Jansen, Express Data's Australian and New Zealand sales director. In order to be competitive, a good sales person must be aware of changes and opportunities occurring in their client base. Having suitable stock profiles for those customers is critical. So we made the strategic decision to invest in a business intelligence solution that would give us these capabilities and enable us to operate smarter."

iQ4bis: The right choice
After a brief look at some of the other business intelligence products on the market, Express Data selected Q4bis as the solution and PST Software as the implementation specialists.

"We selected iQ4bis for a number of reasons," says Jansen. "First of all, iQ4bis was optimised to work with our Microsoft SQL Server databases, so that was a major plus for us. Secondly, the ease-of-use of iQ4bis Analysis meant that we could train all of our key staff without taking them off-line. With iQ4bis Analysis, people can easily analyse business information specific to their departments. After a two-minute training program, our top level management, sales directors, marketing and finance people could drive iQ4bis Analysis. You don't have to be technically-minded to use the system."

iQ4bis was also selected as it combines the backend extract transform and load (ETL) functions and data warehousing tools. iQ4bis DataServer manages the ETL function and integrates Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft OLAP technology for analysis. This combination allowed Express Data to build their data warehouse with a single solution using industry standard technology.

Implementation: No hassles with POC and RIM
The implementation of iQ4bis went extremely well. In fact, iQ4bis was operational even before purchase as a result of the iQ4bis Proof of Concept (POC). "The Q4bis POC was a key factor in why we initially looked at their solution," explains Jansen.

"We had the chance to see our own business information working in the iQ4bis architecture before we had to make any decisions. This approach was important to us as it gave our key decision-makers the opportunity see if iQ4bis was the right fit. That, combined with iQ4bis' Rapid Implementation Module (RIM), meant that the implementation was 100% successful, on time and to budget." 

While iQ4bis is effective 'off the shelf', PST Software customised the iQ4bis CRM 'Face to Face' view. "We wanted to analyse the performance of our individual sales representatives," says Jansen, "specifically how many hours each sales representative was spending with each client and comparing these hours with the revenue generated from that client. This couldn't be done before the implementation of iQ4bis. Now, with our customised views, our sales representatives can access this information easily and we can more effectively manage our client base and evaluate sales representative performance."
 
Immediate benefits
Since implementing iQ4bis, Express Data has seen a bottom line improvement of of 5-10% in the first 12 months alone. "We've been able to reduce our aged stock from 40-50% to 15%," says Jansen, "and that represents a huge savings for us. That alone would be more than enough to make the whole exercise an unqualified success. But we've been able to get more, much more, from the iQ4bis business intelligence solution."

"iQ4bis has fundamentally changed the way we do business," says Jansen. "Staff and management use it daily to make more commercially savvy business decisions. The iQ4bis tools are easy to use for non-technical staff and we can now understand and analyse our business information from our own desktops in real time. We're able to see trends as they happen and make informed decisions based on hard information rather than intuition. We can see, graphically, which products customers are buying and when and that helps us better predict customer buying patterns. And that in turn gives us more precise stock control."

Before iQ4bis," says Jansen, "we thought we knew these metrics as a 'gut feel'. But now that we can see the reality with iQ4bis, we've been able to tighten up our operation significantly. And the proof of that has been a significant increase in our bottom line."

Click here to register for free iQ4Bis Proof of Concept

For more information contact
Sunesh Samarasinghe
General Manager – Australasia
iQ4bis Software (NZ) Ltd
64 9 529 3767
sunesh@iq4bis.com

August 2005