Constant change is the only sure thing in the market for grain and feeding stuffs, where Østsjællands Andel, with revenue of 1.7 billion DKK, is among the largest Danish grain- and feeding stuffs producers. The working days of the approximately 215 employees are influenced by price-conscious customers and small earnings margins as well as long planning horizons. This imposes high demands on analyses and forecasts based on fresh data.
From four days to half an hour
Østjællands Andel (ØA), which is one of Denmark’s largest grain and feedstuff companies, operates in a market with low earnings through long time horizons. The company therefore needs to closely monitor performance and results. Previously it was left to a single employee in ØA to create the important monthly reports that management would act by. That was a slow process with a high risk of typing errors, and for this reason ØA started looking for an IT-based reporting solution. They chose TARGIT Business Intelligence Suite.
IT manager Peter Andersen from ØA explains the background for choosing TARGIT: “In our market, obtaining knowledge in time ensures earnings. Therefore, the automation of processes such as for example reporting is one of the overall driving forces behind our use of information technology. At the implementation, the reporting function was adjusted in such a way that it presented management with all the vital information structured in the same way as before. Only a lot faster. Previously, one person spent four days creating our monthly reports. And we were often well into the following month before the report was ready for distribution. Now, we have the report half an hour after closing the month, and, in principle, we can create it anytime,” clarifies Peter Andersen.
An unexpected added bonus
As the TARGIT solution was implemented, ØA also found that the analysis part of TARGIT provided many possibilities. Peter Andersen explains: “TARGIT Analysis turned out to be an unexpected added bonus which has led to entirely new ways of working with data. Through online access to the analysis tool, the retail- and sales managers can now follow tendencies compared to budget measured by product group, the individual sales person’s performance, the achieved profits and other relevant parameters on a daily basis.”
Paid for itself in one year
Because ØA have very specific and unconventional requirements towards reports, they benefit from the great flexibility in TARGIT in a way that has rarely been seen before. “The money saved on wages alone made up for a large part of the ROI that was earned back 100% in one year. But most importantly, we have received a better and more detailed overview of the business and a smoother handling of detailed data”, Peter Andersen states about the use of TARGIT Business Intelligence Suite. The TARGIT solution is now a decisive element in ØA’s IT-strategy, and the solution will be developed further to cover more business areas.
