Selecta needed a solution that could give them the benefits of an integrated system without the costly expenditure of replacing all of its current applications used across the business.
Selecta UK is part of the Selecta Group, the largest vending operator in Europe. Head quartered in Berkshire, Selecta UK operates 21,000 point of sale vending machines in the UK and maintains a further 15,000 machines.
As vending operators, Selecta UK specialises in food and beverage vending machines, supplying to clients in many different sectors including business and industry, the public sector, hospitals and schools and public locations such as railways and airports.
Selecta’s largest clients include Royal Bank of Scotland and IBM.
The company has been successfully using the same software programmes for many years. Whilst the disparate systems all individually offered Selecta the required functionality there was no consolidating reporting tool available to link all the information held on each separate system.
“The scale of the problem became apparent when an investment company requested management information that, due to the detached set up of systems, we were unable to supply” Kirsty Nicholl, Finance Manager, Selecta UK.
By introducing a Business Intelligence solution Selecta would have the visibility of data across all areas of the business that they had not previously had.
The company needed a solution that could give them the benefits of an integrated system without the costly expenditure of replacing all of the current applications used across the business.
Selecta Group’s Head Office in Sweden had been successfully using QlikView for 18 months. The UK head office was also impressed by the functionality Qlikview had to offer and knew immediately that it was the right product for them.
Selecta UK’s business-wide software solution had been supported by CPiO for many years and during this time a strong relationship had developed. As a leading UK QlikView partner, CPiO was an obvious choice for Selecta.
“Choosing the right software partner to work with was straightforward as our relationship with CPiO has always been good. Their knowledge of our IT system is excellent. This coupled with the success in Sweden made our decision to implement QlikView from CPiO simple.” Kirsty Nicholl, Finance Manager, Selecta UK.
QlikView is a vital tool in the production of weekly reports. It enables information from individual data sources to be pulled together in one place for more efficient management reporting. Moreover the presentation of the reports allows for easy analysis and dissection of the information – ranging from national statistics to individual machine visit patterns.
The tool can be used at all levels of the company hierarchy; from measuring merchandiser unit control compliance on an individual machine to displaying a national picture of multi-regional compliance figures. Kirsty Nicholl explains, “At Selecta we use QlikView across the company, from individual merchandisers managing their daily activity through to team leaders producing weekly reports for the Managing Director to review regional and national statistics”.
The benefits were immediately evident as the reporting software was a huge time saver with information available in one place at the touch of a button. The company now had the ability to obtain accurate information – quickly.
“Within weeks of the first reports going live we were using them and they were accurate. We saw the benefits of QlikView instantly”, explains Kirsty Nicholl.
Better usability of information enabled Selecta to make huge savings in efficiency, cutting analysis times by 40 hours per week.
She continues, “Producing the weekly KPI’s was a long manual process, which could take up to 6 hours per team leader per week. Due to the manual intervention of the data, inputting errors within the reports were commonplace. QlikView has allowed for the reports to be produced automatically, and enables quick and accurate analysis.”
Selecta is working towards the development of workstreams to improve efficiency, costing, working capital and machine part profitability.
The next step for Selecta is to introduce a ‘travel option’ on the portal to allow QlikView to analyse travel times of individuals. Selecta also aim to make the machines they already have more profitable. By using QlikView to help determine which machines are underachieving and for what reasons Selecta can identify where changes need to be made.
Kirsty Nicholl concludes, “QlikView gave us a full return on investment within 9 months. It has vastly improved our understanding of Selecta UK’s cost structure, operations and customers, which in turn has aided decision making and enhanced business performance. Furthermore, by using QlikView, we have significantly reduced our costs for business analysis and management reporting.”
