The Company
DES, experts in digital imaging, is recognized in Australia and New Zealand as a market leader for proofing and printing solutions in design, pre-press, packaging, display, graphics and photographic markets. In addition to hardware and consumables they offer full service and support, with DES trained professionals working in partnership with technically oriented customers to develop the best creative solution. (www.des-pl.com.au)
The Challenge
The DES service model results in a complex business, with each project and solution unique. Many customers are looked after by multiple specialist Account Managers, who each focus on specific products. This makes Sales Reporting a potential nightmare, with many product categories, and a complex mix of product types, territories and commission calculations.
Reporting had outgrown spreadsheets. It was at the stage where it needed to be automated, and able to make sense of ever increasing amounts of data.
DES also wanted the flexibility to handle growth and changing sales structures, while avoiding the high cost and administrative overhead of a tier one Business Intelligence application.
The Solution
Ian Clare, DES Managing Director, talked to their business solution provider, Enabling in Sydney. A round table meeting was arranged to discuss the requirements and alternatives.
Enabling suggested Orchid’s Info-Explorer as an easy to use reporting tool, able to ‘slice and dice’ data in many ways and meet the customer requirements with ease. It had the flexibility for new structures and reports to be developed as DES grew. Users could add and remove fields and dimensions for high level summaries, or provide detailed breakdowns, with just an easy mouse movement. They would also be able to run reports themselves, rather than relying on IT people.
DES evaluated this against the alternatives, set it up themselves to prove the concept, and agreed to move ahead with Info-Explorer.
The Result
Chris Gallen, IT Manager at DES, was delighted with the smooth implementation.
After 15 minutes training staff were up and running. It is easy to use, and a simple take-up for new staff. With its pivot table structure, users familiar with Microsoft Excel felt at ease.
"We like the integration with our accounting system, without the need to export data for analysis. Now we know we are up to date and can run reports ourselves any time. No more time-consuming preparation and having to wait for monthly reports", says Chris.
Sales people can now create and run their own reports without needing to rely on support staff, showing what they want, when they want, and how they want it. Management have their own reports too. “Info-Explorer allows us to slice territory sales data to analyse what they are selling, and set up incentive programmes”, says Chris. “The system is very impressive, handling many years of data very quickly.”
A favourite feature for Chris is how you can change the display by dragging and dropping dimensions, and the new data is shown. “You can add or remove a breakdown by region or representative, or show high level totals, just with a mouse movement. It is simple and saves hours, and the results don’t need the checking you need with a spreadsheet”. From an IT perspective, information is now controlled and displayed in a manageable way.
The new reporting has an added benefit for DES’ external audits. Now the auditors have immediate access to clean, clear information, without having to wait hours to get reports. That’s great for DES too. “We no longer dread auditors’ visits. The preparation is so easy!”
“We like the integration with our accounting system, without the need to export data for analysis. Now we know we are up to date and can run reports any time.”
Chris Gallen
IT Manager
DES
