For Ove Wrist & Co., it had to be TARGIT. That was the simple conclusion for the world's largest full-service supplier to the shipping industry. When the organization of 450 employees was searching for a provider of business intelligence, TARGIT fit the bill. In the long term, the solution is going to be consolidated throughout the Wrist Group's 16 companies, and their goal is to gain access to management information quickly while providing superior customer service.
94.000 item numbers with a turnover of almost one billion DKK! These figures in themselves show a clear need for overview and insight – business intelligence is crucial in any industry, but, the shipping industry in particular has been slow to embrace analysis tools like business intelligence (BI). Thus Ove Wrist & Co. A/S is one of the first companies of its kind at a global level that chose to implement a complete BI solution.”We purchased Microsoft Dynamics AX to use throughout the organization, and the next step was to find a user-friendly tool that would give us the possibility to optimize our business processes and get additional insight and overview of the billions of transactions, we effect each year. Considering our administrative platform, TARGIT BI Suite is the only solution – and that made it easy for us to make the choice”, says Mr. Brian Lindgaard Jensen, who leads Ove Wrist & Co.’s BI group and whose main position it is to function as the right-hand man of the company’s CEO.
Value Added and Easy To Use!
The challenge in any financial system is that as a standard, it is not possible to analyze an individual sale to a customer. Only the turnover per item is measured and this is not acceptable due to multiple transactions meaning that even a minor change in margins or the speed of the order to the individual customer can have a great impact on the results. The speed of inventory turnover, which also serves as a critical optimization and earning parameter to Ove Wrist & Co., cannot be withdrawn from the financial system either. Nor can the actual hit rate of the order biddings which also has a decisive role for the necessity of optimizing the internal processes. ”All the functionalities that we have been missing, we get by very few clicks in TARGIT BI Suite. The value of the analyses is absolutely enormous since we have that many transactions a year. Our quote speed is crucial for obtaining an order and minor optimization of our workflow on this area makes a big difference to us”, says Mr. Lindgaard Jensen and continues: ”Our users have to be able to go directly into the BI tool. This is of utmost importance to us since we as a business, even at a global level, are not at all used to using a solution that even resembles TARGIT’s tools. TARGIT is known to have had user-friendliness in mind at all times which ensures a very quick turnaround from question to answer. Even inexperienced users can use the solution from day one! A whole new world is laid before us because we easily discover patterns in our data, which means that we now see things that have been invisible to us before.
From small and humble to the world’s greatest
The influx of orders often comes to Ove Wrist & Co. directly from the shipping companies or the ships at sea, but the vast majority of the orders are e-mailed or faxed initially to the entire business that in unison make an offer. The fastest and best offer, from a price point of view, will win the order, which is delivered alongside a ship on the ocean or in a specific port. Ove Wrist & Co. has through the years developed a grand expertise in the handling, logistics and delivery of everything from cocktail sausages, pate’ and oil to screws and steel. The implementation of TARGIT BI Suite is changing the way Ove Wrist and Co. does business.
”In areas where we have been used to looking to the past, we can now look forward, and by using the in-built notification systems we can react with precision to changes in the level of service all the way down to the level of the individual customer or product. The goal is to become even more accurate in every area in which we can make a difference, since this is where we can affect our profitability and ability to win the orders on which we make an offer. The use of BI will clearly entail numerous changes in our proceedings due to a larger extent of transparency in the processes, and we expect that it will lead to a better customer service experience overall while being able to attach metrics to the bottom line. We cannot possibly wish for more”, concludes Mr. Lindgaard Jensen.
About Ove Wrist Group
Wrist Group A/S consists of three divisions which all operate in the shipping and offshore industry, and deliver all the raw material it takes to run a ship and ensure the well-being of the crew. Wrist Group was founded in Aalborg, Denmark in 1966 and has grown from a small, humble company into being the world’s largest independent oil supplier for the shipping business. OW Bunker & Trading sold for more than 26 millions DKR in 2006, and expect the turnover to increase additionally in the years to come. In addition to Ove Wrist & Co.’s business, Wrist Group has established the company Wrist Shipping, which focuses on shipping related activities. Further information can be found on the website www.wrist.com
