HCL Infosystems is one of India’s premier IT Services, Distribution and Digital Solutions Company providing the choice of multi-brand technology products and best-in-class IT services and solutions.

They aim to be the partner of choice for the large OEMs by creating a distribution network by deploying cutting-edge technology, thus creating an efficient & responsive distribution network. With this aim, the main agenda for them was to create a system that caters to the analytical needs of all their employees and partners. To achieve the same, we implemented a Qlik Sense based analytics solution to provide a seamless experience to external as well as internal customers.

The Challenge

Owing to the vast expanse of their business, HCL Infosystem uses different applications catering to different business units. Each of the business units had multiple departments that were following a diverse approach to data management. To manage data emanating out of these disparate sources MIS team used to sit incorporate as well as branch offices 35 across India. They were lacking on a single version of truth & data sanctity. Also, around 700MB to 1GB of data was getting added on a daily basis from 800 distributors, 12 channels, 50 OEMs & 80000 retailers, but there was no provision for extracting decision-making insights.

Time Consuming:

They used to manually collate & analyse the data in spreadsheets. This required switching through multiple applications to collect the data. In addition, handling huge data and incorporating complex logic exposed the spreadsheet’s limitations.

Reports were needed to take tactical & strategic decisions; Operational teams used them daily whereas top- management had a requirement on a need-to-know basis. Due to manual reporting, these reports were usually delayed and inaccurate.

Low Value:

Along with that, these reports did not provide access to some must-have KPIs. For Example, Sales & Distribution department did not receive any information for sold or returned products. As a result, they couldn’t measure the actual sales figure. They lacked a system that could automatically detect any non-adherence of any specified threshold and raise a flag corresponding to that.

Subjective Decision Making:

Business dynamics were changing with ever-expanding offerings, but underlying practices remained the same. Decision-making was largely judgment based which was not helping to sustain the competitive pressure.

The Solution

In a quest to deliver better outcomes, HCL Infosystem decided to optimize their data management and decision- making process. Qlik Sense precisely suited their expectations with its one-stop platform for data analysis as well as automated reporting capabilities.

The requirement gathering was done in-person with department heads along with conducting collective workshops. This helped us resolve ambiguities and get everyone on the same page.

Agile Processes To Incorporate Evolving Requirements:

During implementation, the tasks were executed in sprints. A Task could be referenced as the process of identifying the user’s requirement and basis that doling-out dashboards pertinent to them. A typical task completion span was around 5-6 days. Having these shorter sprints increased the visibility of the value-added as the business users were able to see the impact very early in the implementation phase. They started to comprehend what else could be achieved and that’s where they understood the actual power of the tool and updated their requirements. Our Agile methodology helped to incorporate these evolving demands.

While we started implementation with a sole focus on the sales department, we ended up delivering value to Finance, Procurement, Services, warehouses and HR department too.

Informative, Uniform & Actionable Insights:

We worked closely with each of these concerned departments to understand their day-to-day interactions across applications. It influenced how we developed the dashboards, what the functionality should be, what would be the underlying algorithm and how we designed the visual layer’s essential, how we could make it more insightful & informative for the end-users.

This helped business users get actionable insights at the right time. In addition, it gave them the capability to further slice & dice the data to get answers to their queries. An alert mechanism was enabled which would automatically flag-off any activity exceeding the threshold.

Uniformly Integrated With IT-Ecosystem:

Department-wise analytics was built-in so that the users at the operational level could quickly move through the data that didn’t matter (Low-value) to data that mattered (High-Value). The implementation helped us develop a model that cut across departments, channels & distribution networks.

KPIs & Dashboards have been embedded in existing applications and tightly integrated on a real-time basis with the Company’s ERP. Sales Team has it in their Mobile applications, the operations team has it embedded in the existing organization intranet portal. While management accesses the Qlik-hub either on desktop/laptop or mobile, the Qlik enabled financial systems gives the finance team access to all the data in one place.

Since providing a license to all users was not feasible hence, we provided licenses for Nprinting through which everyone started receiving reports in his/her Mail-boxes. And despite having different delivery mediums, everyone in the organization was using a single version of the truth.

The Results

Due to integration with Qlik Nprinting, users started receiving important reports through emails by 6 AM each day. Nearly a thousand reports were delivered spanning across every level of the hierarchy.

These emails contained KPIs in the form of charts, tables in the mail body as well as attachments in the form of PowerPoint, Excel, PDF and word. Due to this, a business user had critical information before starting his/her day.

80% of the HCL staff accessed the operational systems on their Mobile devices, hence embedding Qlik sense in mobile applications significantly enhanced usability.

All these factors made sure of certain direct as well as indirect cost savings along with exposure to some metrics that were not comprehensible in their traditional system.

99% of manual intervention and the risk of inadvertent human-errors were reduced.

Taking fact-based objective decisions enabled them to stay ahead of the curve and better serve their business partners. Now, they could identify the problem area along with the root cause.

What They Have To Say:

The highlights of the implementation process were comprehensive requirement gathering and setting up a fully thought-out feedback mechanism. Their constant involvement and high-quality implementation made them the partner of choice for organization-wide implementation.

Deepankar Srivastava

General Manager IT, HCL Infosystem