NDS began producing plastic drainage products over 20 years ago. Today the company is the largest source of all types of drainage, landscape and irrigation products in the US.

The company prides itself on combining the highest quality products and service with the personal touch. However, until recently the demands of ad hoc reporting were draining valuable resources in the company's IT, accounting, and marketing departments. Analysts were so busy running one-off reports that no time was left for developing more complex reports and applications.

Brian Pozar, director of information technology at NDS, investigated and acquired a business intelligence product to run on the company's AMD Dual Core server with Syspro ERP and SQL 2000 SP4 database. The Syspro ERP was acquired in 1999 when it was adopted as a Y2K replacement for an older ERP system that was not upgradeable.

“Our organisation was thirsting for information,” says Pozar. “The problem with the ad hoc reporting method we were using was that report requests typically generated more report requests. Either the requestor was not specific enough in their first request, thus the report needed to be reworked, or the first report raised more questions than it answered.”

Pozar evaluated a wide number of products in the process of locating a BI solution that worked well with Syspro. “We quickly saw that the larger BI products would require a Fortune-500 caliber IT department to get them up and running and we didn’t want to fall into the two-year, $2 million trap.”

The iQ4bis proof of concept (POC) process convinced Pozar it was the product that NDS needed. “Without a doubt, the POC blew us away,” says Pozar, “not just from an IT perspective of how little work was involved, but from the business side and seeing how much information could be mined from iQ4bis with very little effort.”

Moreover, many BI products lacked the three-dimensional slicing and dicing that is the hallmark of the iQ4bis BI Suite.

A key factor with any software solution is how long it takes to install it and get users trained to use it.

“We purchased 80-hours of consulting time for the installation and training,” says Pozar.

“By the third day of having a consultant onsite, I wanted him to leave so I could take the reins and continue defining reports by myself. Fortunately, I let him stick around another couple of days and he created a set of financial reports for us. Six months later, I have yet to use my remaining 40-something hours of consulting time. There just hasn’t been a need.”

Like any business, the user culture can be a little resistant to change, and NDS had 200 computer users targeted for training. Training was usually viewed as a major workload at NDS. However, after a few sessions training various key people on iQ4bis and holding a “train the trainer” session with NDS analysts, Pozar reports that users welcomed the new system.

“We are seeing rapid growth in the adoption of iQ4bis throughout the organisation. Employees not yet trained began to log onto the system. This is the best user endorsement a tool like iQ4bis can earn.”

Once NDS CEO Mike Gummseon began to see what iQ4bis could do, he requested acceleration of the training of all employees to make sure they knew how to use it effectively in their decision-making activities. Pozar and a iQ4bis consultant ran the first training session at NDS’s annual sales meeting, where regional sales managers and product managers were trained along with upper management in the sales and marketing departments. The installation process was also handled by Pozar, who has an intermediate knowledge of MS SQL and Access.

The sales department had been the primary user of iQ4bis at NDS at this point, since this department was the primary focus of IT for simplifying report development. Other departments and managers are beginning to use the resulting sales reports.

The demand manager at NDS uses iQ4bis to compare forecasts to actuals. “We were able to build a special forecasting metric analysis called Weighted MAPE into Analysis Web that proved very useful,” says Pozar.

Pozar says another benefit arising from iQ4bis was better service level evaluation. “We evaluate service levels for our customers by a statistic called a Fill Rate. Many people in the organisation are now using the iQ4bis BI Suite to evaluate this factor. We were able, as a result, to discontinue our old Excel reports on fill rates that used to be emailed out as a part of our nightly automation routine.”

NDS also managed to make labour savings as a result of implementing iQ4bis. “As part of our written justification for iQ4bis, our CFO decided to forgo a request for a new analyst position in the 2006 budget,” says Pozar.

This leap of faith on the CFO’s part worked. “Today, our analysts are less busy providing one-off reports than they were last year. Instead, their time is being spent developing complex reports and performing advanced analysis,” he adds.

”Much more important than the savings in labor, the insight into the business we are now getting is sure to impact the bottom-line.”

Pozar says that iQ4bis has already delivered 100 percent return on investment over six months and he anticipates other future benefits. “iQ4bis has started to pull back the curtains on our business, and as our utilisation and proficiency in iQ4bis increases, we predict that weaknesses and opportunities will become more apparent and present opportunities for change that will directly impact our results. The biggest challenge we are facing at the moment is using our imagination to decide what to do next. We know that production, inventory, and purchasing reports are on the horizon."

NDS reckons it wrote the book on drainage. With iQ4bis, it looks like the company is also writing the book on how to feed an organisation thirsting for information.

 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

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