The Cocoa Trees tastes sweet success in eliminating workfl ow ineffi ciencies and improving business decisions with QlikView
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- Asia
Country
- Singapore
Product
- QlikView
- MS Navision
Tech Stack
- MS SQL Server
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Customer Satisfaction
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Applicable Industries
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Sales & Marketing
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- Data Science Services
About The Customer
The Cocoa Trees is the largest distributor and retailer of chocolate and confectionary products in the Asia Pacific region. A local success story, it started in 1991 with just 5 people, representing 2 brands. In 1999, it launched the popular The Cocoa Trees chocolate boutique stores in Singapore. Today, it has a portfolio of more than 35 internationally renowned brands such as Kraft (Toblerone, Milka, Daim, Cote d’Or) Masterfoods (M&M’s, Snickers, Mars), Ferrero Rocher, Herhseys, Cadbury and Nestle, and a distribution network that covers most of Indo-China, Southeast, North and Northeast Asia and as far west as India.
The Challenge
In 2004, The Cocoa Trees found that its accounting system, which was designed for generating static reports and financial statements, and based on batch processing, became inadequate for the rapidly growing operations. They were unable to generate reports on inventory levels on-demand or in real-time. Twice a month, the warehouse supervisor had to physically inspect stocks to prepare an inventory expiry date report to monitor the shelf-life of these perishable items. It was time-consuming as each report took two days to complete, with inevitable errors. Service levels were unsatisfactory as the order fulfillment cycle took too long. Salespeople could not propose or confirm orders with customers immediately against inventory levels. On top of that, because of the lack of clarity on inventory, some salespeople circumvented the system by physically pre-packing stocks at the warehouse to reserve the stocks, leading to many internal conflicts.
The Solution
In 2004, the company decided that it had to eliminate these workflow inefficiencies and started looking for a solution that would help them achieve this. They chose QlikView, a solution that enables real-time, user-friendly and flexible access to information. The Cocoa Trees used Navision to assign expiry dates to inventory, allow users to “lot-track” inventory by expiry date and allow transaction processing/ posting to maintain inventory balances in real-time. Data from Navision was then put through QlikView to create dynamic dashboards and analysis that offered much more insight than static reports typically generated from ERP systems. With QlikView, information is constantly updated, and all departments from export sales, retail sales, local sales, purchasing, accounts and even the CEO, can access inventory and sales information in real-time.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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