Astralis A/S is Denmark’s largest producer of massive pine tree furniture. The company was founded in 1976 as a carpentry shop, but in 1981 the strategy changed and the foundation for actual furniture production was established. Since then, Astralis has experienced rapid growth, and today the company has a turnover of 600 million DKK. Primary markets are Europe, the Middle- and Far East as well as the US.
Astralis A/S was experiencing slow and inefficient reporting. Jesper Jensen, Sales Administrator at Astralis, comments: "Our reports could only be created and printed in the finance department, and therefore they were constantly questioned: Are the right figures being used, why do figures differ on different reports, which figures are the most realistic and trustworthy, and why are reports not alike?"
Astralis started looking for a system to meet this challenge. "We were looking for a system which was capable of creating fast and well-arranged analyses. In addition, we wanted a system that could be used by everyone independently of the finance department", says Jesper Jensen. TARGIT was found to be the optimal solution, and since 2001 Astralis has been using TARGIT Business Intelligence Suite as the analysis tool on top of the company's existing Navision solution. "TARGIT was chosen because the system is capable of showing interesting data quickly and in a simple manner, and because analyses can be made by everyone without affecting the Navision system. "
Extraordinary user-friendliness
Astralis uses TARGIT to manage the product portfolio. Jesper Jensen says: "Among other things, we can see which customers are buying which products, and we compile a range of customer-specific statistics. Our data foundation is the invoice data from Navision. The data structure in our Navision solution was highly complicated; however, with TARGIT this issue has been solved as the system collects relevant data and sends it into a data warehouse making it subsequently available for analysis through the TARGIT BI Suite."
"It is easy to start using TARGIT BI Suite, and the unique graphic user interface makes the system extraordinarily user-friendly. Only imagination sets limits to what the system can be used for. The system is so easy to start using that it has not been necessary to get any training before we started", says a very enthusiastic Jesper Jensen.
Improved communication and portfolio management
"Today everyone can create and see the reports, and we all see the same figures. We have no trouble finding the right figures, and they are easy to interpret, which means that we are now seeing connections that we did not know about before. The speed has also increased significantly as it only takes a moment to create a report. The new available and credible knowledge provides us with a much better, faster and more flexible basis for decision making. All in all, we have to say that the internal communication has improved, and our portfolio management has become much less complicated."
