Qlik > Case Studies > RS Components enables its team to focus on business-critical analysis

RS Components enables its team to focus on business-critical analysis

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

Asia
Pacific

Country

Australia
Hong Kong
Japan
Singapore

Product

QlikView

Tech Stack

Oracle JDE
CDC Pivotal

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics

Applicable Industries

Electronics

Applicable Functions

Sales & Marketing
Warehouse & Inventory Management

Use Cases

Inventory Management
Supply Chain Visibility

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

RS Components is a world-leading distributor of electronic components, and part of Electrocomponents PLC in the United Kingdom, a FTSE public listed company. The global company has over 4,000 employees, while RS Components employs over 1,000 throughout Asia Pacific. The company has a range of 450,000 electronic components and industrial products that it supplies to over 1.6 million customers worldwide in over 80 countries. Products include semiconductors, connectors, capacitors, resistors, LEDs, relays, switches, indicators and power supplies, batteries, cables, control gear, fans, HVAC, security, tools, plumbing, hosing, books, IT, safety and test and measurement products. Its business in Asia Pacific generated GBP 104 million in revenue for the financial year 2009.

The Challenge

RS Components, as part of the global Electrocomponents PLC group, operates over a large geographical footprint. With the components business being fiercely competitive, the management team considered it mission-critical to be able to make business decisions swiftly. However, their existing decision support system was achieved through the manual consolidation of data directly from their ERP and CRM application systems (JD Edwards and Pivotal). This meant that they were spending too much time on data consolidation before any analysis could be made, delaying important decisions as a result. To tackle this, RS Components realized it needed a management tool or system that could provide strategic insights on the performance of its business across all functions. The system should be able to provide data for their Key Performance Matrixes, and assist management with their strategic discussions thereby improving their decision-making process. In order to achieve this, this system should be able extract data from multiple robust and complex systems spread across a diversed geographical region to provide a common view of the business which everyone in the company could rely on.

The Solution

RS Components implemented the QlikView solution to provide management oversight to its entire business across the Asia Pacific. The solution draws 8 primary data sources from Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, to a centralized repository, reducing reporting time and freeing up resources to concentrate on performing analysis. The RS Components IS team needed to pull data from 8 primary sources, instances of JD Edwards and Pivotal, physically located in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. At each source, data is drawn into QlikView data files daily, and transferred to a central QlikView server for users to analyze business information without having to connect to the actual JD Edwards and Pivotal systems. Data and insights are properly segregated based on user profile. Sensitive data remains secure as user rights are managed and controlled via their Active Directory integration with QlikView.

Operational Impact

The QlikView solution was well received by the end-users due to its good user experience, ease of use and ability for self-help – leading to better user empowerment.
QlikView is now deployed to analyze RS Components’ sales, products, marketing as well as inventory and warehousing.
The data is cleaned continually at source, and changes are reflected daily in QlikView.
Manipulating data can be done in QlikView without actually connecting to the actual JD Edwards and Pivotal data instances; this takes away the strain from core translational systems without the need of a data warehouse.
As data is aggregated and pulled automatically daily, this frees up many of their user’s time to focus on value added activities such as the critical task of analyzing the data and understanding its insights rather than focusing on the manual work on pulling data together.

Quantitative Benefit

This has resulted in a dramatic increase in productivity. At times some reports took weeks of man-days to pull, collate, check, and report; now users go online to access the reports whenever they want.