Distribution industry
A distributor of office supplies delivers to around 4000 business to business customers that are handled by 1 sales director and 18 account managers with responsibility for monitoring and growing the business.
Context
Reporting used to be done monthly in Excel, based on exports from the ERP system. Daily reports could also be downloaded but they required too much work tinkering to clean and filter data each time. Each account manager kept reports in separate files, in inconsistently structured folders.
Problem
The main business issue was lack of customer visibility. Account managers found it difficult to manage roughly 500 clients each with sufficient detail, so they they focused only on the larger customers. Drops or increases in revenue could not be explained well.
Solution
- We restructured the reporting rhythm and set metrics to measure monthly and weekly performance
- Daily exports from the ERP system were automated and directed into a separate database with 1 million rows, tuned for dynamic, ad-hoc reporting. A data schema was designed to enable rich MDX queries such at month to date, year to date and past 12 months rolling metrics.
- We installed a tool (Saiku) that allows for intuitive “slicing and dicing” of the data by time, SKU and product groups and sub-groups, geography and customer segments.
Result
Now the sales team can quickly spot worrying patterns and zoom in/out quickly to explore them from any given angle, all in the context of the big picture in their portfolios. The account managers report having more in-depth understanding of customers and an ability to take early proactive measures to protect and increase sales.