Lumileds Lighting is the world’s leading manufacturer of high-power Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and a pioneer in the use of solid-state lighting solutions for everyday purposes including automotive lighting, computer displays, LCD televisions, signage and signaling and general lighting.

The San Jose, California-based company’s patented LUXEON Power Light Sources are the first to combine the brightness of conventional lighting with the small footprint, long life and other advantages of LEDs. The company manufactures billions of LEDs annually and also supplies core LED material and LED packaging.

With a wide portfolio of products, factories on two continents and a worldwide network of sales offices, Lumileds is a data-intensive company. Like many forward thinking organisations, Lumileds has implemented a number of high-tech solutions to help it manage its operations including JD Edwards One World ERP.

But Lumileds’ upper-level management wanted more business information that they could use to analyse the dynamics of their global operation.

“From a logistical point of view, we were very happy with the way our IT operations were being run and the way the data was captured and stored," says IT manager Terrie Brown. "But we weren’t totally satisfied with the reporting we could generate from our JD Edwards ERP system. Specifically, we wanted an easier, faster way to view sales data across various sales dimensions instead of running multiple ERP reports. Additionally, our financial analysis team wanted a better way to consolidate and present a comparison between forecasts and actual sales.”

Finding the right solution
Lumileds decided to look into acquiring a Business Intelligence (BI) solution that would be easy to implement and operate, inexpensive to deploy and that was 100% compatible with its JD Edwards platform. “We looked at various BI solutions, but we couldn’t justify the costs involved," says Brown. "Then at a JD Edwards User Group conference we were introduced to iQ4bis. They gave us all the right answers and their pricing was certainly within our target range. And they claimed that they could demonstrate their software, something they called a ‘Proof of Concept’ demonstration, to us in a very short time frame using our own data. So we said, ‘go ahead, show us’. And they did.”

“Lumileds' data was well-structured in standard JDE tables “but we found a few data integrity issues that had previously gone unnoticed," says Robyn Dean of iQ4bis. "iQ4bis is optimised to read JD Edwards data so we were able to quickly load their data and build the ‘views’ for display. So when it came time for the Proof of Concept (POC) demonstration we were well-prepared. And, as we’ve come to expect, the POC sealed the deal.”

“We were very impressed with the demo,” says Jennifer McKay, a financial analyst with Lumileds and a member of its BI evaluation team. “The software met our requirements and performed so much better than any of the other BI solutions we had looked at. It had the flexibility we required and, as a potential user, I quite liked the intuitive interface. Plus they proved to us how quickly they would be able to get us up and running, something none of the other vendors would guarantee.”

“We were also impressed with the way the software picked up the data quality issues,” says Brown. “We saw immediately that iQ4bis would be a perfect fit for us. Th eir site-licensing option meant that we could roll out iQ4bis to anyone who needed it for a very competitive price. Plus the ease-of-use meant that we could train additional users with a minimum of effort.”

Switching databases in five minutes
A year after the installation of iQ4bis and Microsoft SQL Server, Lumileds decided to move its entire JD Edwards system from the Oracle platform to Microsoft SQL Server. “We had decided to migrate due to a number of reasons including cost,” says Brown. “The fact that iQ4bis was already running smoothly under Microsoft SQL Server was a definite plus. The actual operation of porting JD Edwards from an Oracle environment to Microsoft took a weekend of almost non-stop work. But because iQ4bis is essentially ‘database agnostic’ the conversion of the iQ4bis side of things took literally five minutes. Switching the data sources was incredibly easy. And, of course, there was no change in functionality.”

“iQ4bis has really helped us where we needed it,” says McKay. “Our major requirement was to be able to analyse sales, forecast and distributor data and compare and contrast the various performance indicators across geographic regions. These types of analysis were extremely difficult to complete before, but now I can perform them with a few clicks. And if I want to drill down or look at different data, I can do it myself without having to get assistance from the IS team.”

The sales team has also found iQ4bis useful. “The sales people use it to track their performance,” says McKay, “while the sales managers can better allocate their resources using iQ4bis. They can have near real-time access to the latest data which is a big help when they do their weekly and monthly sales reports.”

“We’ve been very pleased with the way iQ4bis has fit into our overall decision-making process,” says Brown. “The software is extremely stable and we’ve had absolutely no problems with maintenance. We’re working with iQ4bis, the company, to continue our technical training so that we can start to develop more complex analysis routines. We have some high expectations for iQ4bis in respect to more sophisticated financial planning routines and are looking forward to even greater returns from our investment.”

Click here to register for free iQ4Bis Proof of Concept

For more information contact

Asj Smith            
General Manager- APAC
iQ4bis Management Software Limited
+64 9 366 2635
Visit our website www.iQ4bis.com

February 2006