The ACL database accumulates details for all 163,000 members as well as over 750,000 service interventions. For ACL, the challenges were clear: they did not have a consolidated view of their data and the lead-time to get answers was very long. Something had to be done - and the answer was a business intelligence solution. On the recommendation of a Microsoft employee, and after having witnessed a presentation of the TARGIT system, they decided on TARGIT BI Suite. The ease of use and the short implementation time combined with the strong integration with the MS SQL server, the immediate relevance and a very attractive end-user interface convinced them that they had made the right choice.
Overview with BI
ACL has several customized IT systems that deliver data for analysis in TARGIT. They use the business intelligence solution to monitor activities of both the commercial and the social profit branches, including service management, call center activities, logistics, cash register details, as well as key finance parameters based on data from the custom built Apollo accounting system.
To get accurate figures, ACL first built a data warehouse using MS SQL server 2005 to integrate data from the different applications, then proceeded to build several SQL server Analysis Services OLAP cubes to accurately monitor each activity: cash register, service entry details, call center activities, finance data, membership data and details etc.
Giovanni de Felice, Marketing & Project Manager at ACL agrees that "it would be virtually impossible to maintain an overview of the strategic parameters, nor would it be possible for end-users to generate meaningful analyses or reports without the TARGIT business intelligence system."
Future BI plans
All managers in key areas have access to the TARGIT system, and after some internal training, ACL plans to give access to operational users as well as in the call-center, based on the new CRM data. In the future, ACL also wants to use TARGIT reports and analyses to measure the performance of new activities, such as the Clubcar car rental activity: ACL recently purchased 20 vehicles to be used for the car rental service towards its members and would like to monitor how much each car is being used over the whole year, before opting to purchase more cars or work with a renting subcontractor instead.
TARGIT is being used by top management to keep track of all functional domains within ACL and as a basis for the weekly management meetings. Because of the implementation of a TARGIT Business Intelligence system at ACL, the need to create time-consuming manual queries has disappeared completely. In 2009, TARGIT will also be used to analyze the information generated by the new internally developed CRM system. André Streitz (Business Analyst at ACL) quotes: "not only is TARGIT very easy to use for the end-users, it is also quite easy for the IT department to add further analytical functionality and grow the business intelligence system according to the changing needs of our organization."
