Kardex
Case Study
Transforming the planning and forecasting capabilities in the project business of a leading supplier of automated storage solutions and material handling systems.
Kardex
Materials handling systems for industry, and file handling systems for offices.
Products used
Apliqo UX
Solutions
Reporting and planning in the project management business
Size
>1800 employees
Revenue
>400 Mio EUR
Overview
One of the things that we often see across the modern business landscape is that Microsoft Excel starts to reach its limits as an all-in-one tool when
the complexity of a company continues to grow. We saw this recently with a client of ours who found that their usage of the ‘percentage of completion’ method within their operations was proving too much for their existing Excel models.
The client needed to find a new way of doing things quickly in order to efficiently launch a brand-new product that had been in the works for some time. That’s where Apliqo stepped in and implemented Apliqo UX, the definitive interface layer for IBM Planning Analytics / TM1.
Challenges
The client needed a tool and an operating workflow that could handle the following aspects and requirements:
The cost structure had to be flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances and different reporting requirements
The core structure coming out of Cognos needed to be carefully considered.
The reporting itself needed to be far more flexible both within the internal system and in external applications such as Power BI and XLCubed.
It was important that the different personnel had different permissions to manage access, securing the information appropriately, and delegating duties effectively.
The history needed to be tracked seamlessly so that at any time the team could look back on versions and understand how decisions were made.
The ‘percentage of completion’ metric needed to be very robust, being calculated accurately and timeously – as well as in a way that provided for the necessary governance and compliance that play a key role.
The solution needed to minimize human error as much as possible and leverage automation to speed up processing.
The solution implemented
Apliqo worked with the client to scope out the exact system that was needed, and then set out to help them implement Apliqo UX with all the configuration and support that was required.
This required many workshops and walkthroughs with key personnel to dig into the standard workflows and find a solution that would fit seamlessly into how things were done, while still leveraging the power that such a tool provides.
The interface is unlike any other competing products because it doesn’t constrain itself to obey a specific set of standards. Instead it is malleable enough to adapt to any planning or reporting problem that is thrown at it.
So the team set out to configure the interface in the optimal way to solve the client’s specific challenges.
Once the system was designed and ready to go, the Apliqo team ran comprehensive testing to ensure that the client was getting every aspect of the solution to work as intended. It’s in this phase that we often uncover additional requirements and roadblocks – which call for further development and implementation.
All of this is a key part of the process as you work towards a system that is uniquely configured for your needs.
Once the test phase was complete, the team continued with ongoing training and support to upskill employees on Apliqo UX and IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 more generally to ensure that everyone could adapt to the new processes that were being asked of them.
All of this was done in a highly flexible way to deliver great service without getting in the way of business as usual.
The results
The results of the implementation were significantly positive. The client saw immediate gains and mentioned just how transformational this solution had been for their business. Some of the key benefits included the following:
It made for better collaboration between teams and between specific team members because everyone was working from the same source of truth.
It created agility within the workflows by allowing team members to easily adjust plans and forecasts in real-time. This was a key criterion for operating in fast-changing strategic landscapes and conditions.
It improved financial outcomes by nurturing better-quality data and calculations. It helped to optimize the operational tactics used by the client thanks to increased forecast accuracy – an improvement that will continue to compound in the years to come.
It helped achieve more timely deliverables in terms of management reports that were being submitted to management and other key decision-makers.
Decision-making was faster and better-informed thanks to improved internal systems.
There was much faster processing of planning data thanks to a unified platform that could manage all the inherent complexity.
The client no longer needed Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel data dumps and could instead make use of self-service capabilities to dig into the data itself and look for insights.
