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Solution Details
After Analyzing reporting requirements critical to the
customers’ business, Visibility designed a custom sales
Analyzer on a SQL Server 2005 system that retrieved
information already captured in the client’s business
systems (Lotus Notes & Movex). Particular focus was paid to
the data represented in Sales, Invoicing and CRM across
multiple business entities.
Hallis Hudson had previously considered an upgrade of their
Movex ERP system (running on an IBM AS400) but realized that
a Visibility Business Intelligence implementation would be
much more cost effective as they would no longer need to
upgrade their ERP system, and would benefit from a reporting
and analysis solution at a fraction of the upgrade cost.
This decision was supported by the Hallis Hudson Independent
Manufacturing Consultant (Steve Fern) who had previously
seen a Visibility Business Intelligence implementation at
another one of his customer sites (E H Taylor Ltd.)
Once the foundation of the system was in place (Sales
Analyzer) Visibility implemented an online operational
report that incorporated a customer search field for the
call center operations. This report allowed the call center
team to recall customer purchasing patterns over the
last 3 years with graphical representations and drill
through to detail capability, whilst also allowing them to
analyze when the customer was last contacted and by what
media. This has enabled the operatives to “cross sell”,
provide better customer service and maintain the brand image
of Hallis Hudson as a quality supplier.
Alastair Soper, Hallis Hudson Operations Director comments
“With this system, we can give our Customers a much improved
level of service now that our sales teams have comprehensive
information at their finger tips, without having to access a
number of different systems."
The reporting capabilities allows the Call Center team to keep
customer contact details up to date with a drill-through link on the
report allowing the user to access the Lotus Notes CRM
system and edit the details of the customer.
For the external sales team an offline self container set of
data called and OLAP (on-line analytic process) cube is
emailed daily with up to date details, allowing the field sales
people to analyze customer data as and when required. An
OLAP cube contains key data that can be easily viewed and
manipulated by the user in a variety of ways, using
intuitive drag and drop capabilities showing analytic
results instantaneously. This OLAP cube is also made available online to all management
within Hallis Hudson for their own summary view of
information and KPI analysis.
Soper says “The Business Intelligence solution from
Visibility has modernized the way we analyze our performance
for both our Internal and External sales teams.”
With the implementation of the sales data mart and the
reporting solution Visibility also created, utilizing SQL
Server 2005, a web based online document management system
that allowed their reports and any other files to be held
centrally. This resulted in the server carrying the burden
of processing the report rather than the client, it also has
the added benefit of no software installation being required
on the client, thus making the solution virtually zero
footprint.
“Hallis Hudson benefits from the latest Microsoft Business
Intelligence Technology”
Mark Thornton, General Manager, Visibility Europe Ltd.
The Future
Upon completion of the project Hallis Hudson stated that
they would be adding two additional Analyzers (Purchasing and CRM
data marts). They also stated that they
would be installing a new telephone system function (number
recognition) that would be linked directly to the online
customer report, pre-filtering the information for the call
center operative, resulting in the information being
recalled automatically whilst the phone is ringing.
The whole solution was implemented using only Microsoft
software and Visibility’s expert consultants, with the only
software purchase being SQL Server 2005. This implementation
has resulted in Hallis Hudson receiving a comprehensive
reporting and analysis solution in the most cost effective
way.
Soper adds “The Visibility solution will, in time, allow us
to remove a number of inefficient and resource hungry
systems from our organization. We can now save considerable
management time by bringing accurate information straight
into meaningful, preformatted spreadsheets, updateable in
seconds.”
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