Algeco had inconsistent Business Intelligence services running on different platforms across different countries, consequently providing several versions of the truth.

For this reason, the challenge was to involve all countries to build a solution that could offer the same level of satisfaction and needs that they had with the existing BI platforms. There was already at Algeco a strong interest in exploring the emerging technologies that Microsoft was launching, where the main goal was to deliver full BI services and not just have BI tools.

Jean-Marc Varnet, IT Director for Europe, recalls that there were 11 countries within ENSE with different systems: “The context was too diverse, and there was a lack of harmonization across the systems and the business processes. It was then important to consolidate data from several systems into a new Data Warehouse at the ENSE Strategic Business Unit level”.

And so iAnalytics was born—an analytical solution composed of Microsoft technologies recommended and supported by BI4ALL. “Covering several European countries with different ERP systems, iAnalytics was the right answer to obtain all the key performance indicators needed to manage and control the business. This situation helped us to increase the efficiency of the sales force and VAPS (Value-added Products and Services) revenue”, reveals Angèle Brucker, Managing Director of the ENSE Business Unit.

Although the implementation was transversal to all departments, the employees’ reaction was one of the challenges. Due to the fact that the employees started seeing some changes within their daily processes, it wasn’t enough considering their needs at the time. Nonetheless, they were excited about the reports the BI team delivered.

Algeco has been investing in acquiring new companies, and iAnalytics proved to be an essential part of this process, which is always very time-consuming and quite complicated.
For the decision-makers of the Group, it is very important to get the information about the main KPIs of these newly acquired companies so that they can monitor the business together with all other companies of the Group, and that’s where the difference was made.

In about 3/4 months, iAnalytics can provide this relevant information to the decision-makers, already aligned with the entire universe of companies in the Group, thus bringing greater efficiency to the business.

The IT Director for ENSE also tells us about another aspect: “The definition of metrics differed from country to country, such as how we measured the so-called rental unit. We have more than 220,000 modules to rent across Europe. The UOR (units on rent) measures how many units we rent to our customers, and our goal is to have the largest number of units rented to our customers and the least number of units on our facilities. But this metric was not used the same way in all countries.”

To conduct the business more agilely and based on solid and real knowledge, the information started to be consolidated in a single system, iAnalytics. For Jean-Marc Varnet, the highest benefit was being able to “consolidate the information from the various ERP systems and generate, harmonise and capture data from the several operating systems”.

Carlos Cruz also agrees that “the benefits are many and even difficult to quantify”. The solution was a mind-changer and a massive change for Algeco. Accessing from all geographies the same information more straightforwardly and intuitively brings significant benefits to everyone.

Management now has direct access and a broader view of the information, streamlining how they lead the business across the Group.

According to Carlos Cruz, “Decision support has been improved. Business analysts saved time previously spent producing and maintaining the existing reports, and now they can focus on the analysis. Another advantage is having centralised intelligence, which makes any change on a KPI immediately available to everyone, to reduce drastically the time necessary to replicate the change across all the reports and to assure the good quality of data as soon as possible”.

Angèle Brucker highlights that “iAnalytics is very intuitive and easy to use. You can almost use it without any training. It is so powerful that, in combination with Excel, any specific (customised) analysis based on specific challenges can be done in minutes. It shows where the problems are immediately and what corrective actions are needed. As an example, it shows quickly in which industrial sector I am performing well or not, who are the clients at risk of my portfolio (with decreasing revenue) if the prices of my sales representatives are following the guidelines, etc.”