QlikNews: DACHView

Drapes manufacturer ADO achieves what other suppliers only dream of: a brand awareness of over 90 percent in Germany. ADO’s product portfolio consists of 50,000 different articles, sold to 6,000 stores. ADO recognizes the importance of IT for a successful business strategy. A modern ERP system supports all value-adding processes from purchasing, production and warehousing to order entry and execution. Huge data volumes are collected at the company’s headquarters in Aschendorf as well as at international subsidiaries, providing the base for sophisticated reporting and analysis to answer questions such as: How have certain customers done? Which products sell well in which regions? Are there seasonal trends?

However, the Business Intelligence tool integrated into the ERP system could not comply with these requirements. Considerable internal and external efforts were necessary to generate reports and to answer questions, especially because data quality and consistency were less than optimal. The large data volume also caused performance problems with extremely long response times. Switching between different views and data was possible but complicated for end users.

Due to the positive feedback of a new controller, who had experience with QlikView in his last job, ADO’s Manager of Organization & IT, Gerald Jungeblut, downloaded a free trial version from the QlikTech website and exported the biggest table with a million datasets from the ERP system into QlikView. Only two days later, the new ADO sales information system was born. “It was so easy,” remembers Jungeblut. “I simply loaded the data, edited some figures, hit a button and got the correct results.”

Within a few weeks, the new system was up and running. QlikView applications for quality management, sales controlling and logistics were developed and implemented for employees in strategic positions like warehousing, production, controlling, sales, IT and senior management to turn data into actionable information.

“With QlikView, 80 percent of our sales queries can be answered immediately. This enormous gain of time allows us to focus far more than before on other tasks.” says Jungeblut. “QlikView is one of the best software products I have seen. The idea of compressing data in such a smart way enables high system performance and such flexibility that information can be used as a filter for new queries. QlikView is simply ingenious because it is ingeniously simple.”

ADO is planning an expansion of QlikView into some of its European subsidiaries.

The event managers from ERP software specialist and QlikTech partner MODUS Consult AG based in Gütersloh received much praise for their MODUS Consult IT Forum in Paderborn. Perfect planning and high-class presentations from distinguished speakers representing industry, research and politics contributed to the event’s success. Approximately 300 attendees mainly from mid-sized companies clearly appreciated the focus on their particular information needs, improving their knowledge of ERP solutions, and the expertise presented at the forum.

The keynote speakers—Michael Neff, CIO Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG; Ralph Haupter, Business & Marketing Officer at Microsoft Deutschland GmbH; and Heiner Geißler, former German minister—focused on IT and business issues confronting mid-market businesses.

Neff, who was voted CIO of the Year in 2005 and named “One of the Premier 100 IT Leaders” by the US magazine Computerworld, spoke about BI and presented a best practice example achieved with QlikView, which at Heidelberger has become an important strategic tool. According to Neff, the QlikView based benchmarking enables the printing machines manufacturing company to be successful in the long term even under high cost pressure. “With this easy-to-use tool, our management has immediate access to all relevant information. The software is perfectly compatible with our SAP ERP solution and easily integrates production and administration data,” said Neff.

Apart from the keynotes, industry specific seminars were offered for food and beverage, engineering, plastics, and the furniture sector, among others. The forum also featured a trade fair informing attendees about the full range of modern IT products and peripherals.

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