A subsidiary of Tokyo-based ALPS Electric Co., Ltd., ALPS Electric Europa specializes in passive and electromechanical components and supplies, offering more than 170,000 different products that address a wide spectrum of customer needs.
With thousands of products sold throughout Europe through multiple channels, closely monitoring sales to ensure continued profitability was critical to ALPS Electric Europa GmbH. But the company found this very challenging to accomplish.
Hans Burg, Head of IT, explains that his department was always very busy generating customized reports on sales. "This was always a tedious process that involved many different approval steps. For this reason, many of our sales people simply stopped requesting reports. Clearly, this was unacceptable," says Burg.
ALPS started searching for a solution that would include a centralized database that staff could access on their own to print out the reports they needed. "In addition to freeing up IT resources, we were looking to establish one common pool of data as a way to ensure that everyone obtained reliable information," Burg adds.
His team began taking a closer look at the solutions that the market had to offer. Because ALPS was already using the IBM® eServer iSeries™ (AS/400®) as its platform of choice, it seemed logical to stay with this platform.
"It was important to us that we be able to leverage the advantages offered by the iSeries, such as its scalability and reliability. We also wanted to take advantage of our employees' expertise in working with the platform," Burg explains.
ALPS evaluated several vendors, then selected the ShowCase® Suite from SPSS because of its integration with the iSeries. The project was implemented with help from the company's business partner, Cubus.
"To meet the needs of management, we wanted a solution that would support the decision-making process. In terms of both cost-effectiveness and flexibility, we were convinced that the ShowCase Suite would be the right choice. At the same time, we were interested in retaining Microsoft® Excel™ as our front end, simply because our staff was accustomed to using it.
"We wanted to provide our users with a flexible tool that would allow them to produce their own reports, using Excel, without help from the IT department," says Burg. "We had already been using ShowCase Query as an interface to the iSeries to transfer reports to our file network. Therefore, we already knew the company and felt comfortable working with them," Burg summarizes.
Another critical requirement of the business intelligence solution was that it provide secure central information access to ALPS' many European distributors, which use conventional phone lines to connect to ALPS headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany.
"For this reason, we decided in favor of a multidimensional solution. The values contained in our database cubes were all pre-calculated. Calculation in Essbase initially took about three hours, but once this was done, the information was available to dial-up clients extremely quickly, because nothing more had to be calculated. Had we elected to use a two-dimensional database, these calculations would have had to be performed again by the clients, significantly lengthening the amount of time required," Burg explains.
Burg says he was also convinced by the almost limitless scalability that the ShowCase Suite offered, as well as its ability to work with Essbase dimension attributes and to allow users to drill down to obtain further details. The ability to purchase concurrent licenses also made the ShowCase Suite cost-effective.
Regardless of the indicators used to reach a conclusion, our people always obtain the same results. Also, because we are able to monitor payments more accurately, we benefit financially in a very substantial way. As all of this might suggest, we're very pleased with the solution now in place.
Hans Burg
Head of IT
ALPS Electric Europa GmbH
The ShowCase Suite has been in use at ALPS since the spring of 2001, both in sales and in the finance department. Integrating the solution into the existing architecture was easy. There was no need to purchase any new hardware or additional software. From the very outset, user acceptance was high, primarily due to the retention of Microsoft Excel. Immediately following initial training, staff members were able to work with the system without difficulty.
ALPS uses the ShowCase Suite to analyze monthly sales. The so-called billings (i.e., anything that has been invoiced) are compared to the bookings (incoming orders) from the current month. ALPS management is then able to take a closer look at this information in a highly detailed manner. At the departmental level, the company is able to analyze this data as it relates to specific customers.
In another application, the finance department generates reports on customer payment habits. "Every invoice that we send includes payment deadlines that generally vary from country to country and customer to customer. With the help of these reports, we are able to determine whether a customer pays on time or not. This allows us to more accurately document payments and associate them with specific customers and/or projects. This, in turn, helps us determine whether we are facing a quality issue," Burg explains.
A new application will soon be put into place to more carefully analyze how the financial module has performed over time. This represents important information for the management team and serves as an early indicator of business performance.
"Today, both our management and sales staff are able to easily generate their own reports whenever they are needed, and we know that we can rely on our data. Our IT department is able to perform more important tasks than report generation. Regardless of the indicators used to reach a conclusion, our people always obtain the same results. Also, because we are able to monitor payments more accurately, we benefit financially in a very substantial way. As all of this might suggest, we're very pleased with the solution now in place," Burg concludes.
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