Business Intelligence Services provided by CSG Ltd
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CSG Applications Services Enables Informed Decision Making at Sealanes

by Paul

About the Client

Sealanes is a family owned and operated food services, distribution and ship supply business based in Western Australia.  Since its inception in 1922 the business has become the only of its kind in Australia which supplies groceries to the local food service market, provides offshore supplies to rigs around Australia, distributes seafood and is involved in the retail sale of seafood and provisioning of ships with groceries and technical goods in ports around Australia.

Project Overview

CSG implemented Business Objects Edge as a Business Intelligence solution for Sealanes.  The organisation required a solution which would allow quick and reliable access to critical information needed for executive management decision making and one which would enable them to have a real time understanding of business performance.

Client Requirements

Sealanes’ existing ERP system offered them little flexibility in relation to reporting and trend analysis.  They had no ability to access information quickly and no dashboarding capability.  The CFO required a system which would:

  • Provide easy to analyse dashboards to give a full view of business performance  at any time;
  • Provide quick and reliable access to key information needed for executive decision making;
  • Enable in depth analysis and tracking of business performance;
  • Easily integrate with any ERP system

Our Solution

CSG identified Business Objects Edge as the most appropriate business intelligence solution for Sealanes.  The implementation resulted in the opening up of access to information stored within Sealanes’ legacy ERP system enabling the business to quickly monitor performance without having to spend huge amounts of time manipulating Excel spreadsheets.  The Xcelsius dashboards give the executive management team a full view of business performance without any software training at all and have enabled them to make better decisions which are based on analysis of accurate and reliable information.  With plans to implement a new ERP system in subsequent years, Business Objects also gives Sealanes the flexibility to integrate with any ERP system which they decide to choose in the future.

Business Benefits

Through implementing Business Objects Edge, Sealanes has gained:

  • The ability to understand the business in more structured terms;
  • Quick and reliable access to critical information leading to better, more informed decision making;
  • Real time tracking and understanding of business performance;
  • Improved ability to analyse data and business trends

From the Sealanes CFO

“In the future we will be able to confidently identify when we need to run relevant marketing campaigns to increase customer activity or how the cost of Sealanes’ products affects customer purchasing.  A perfect example of this was from analysing the cost of our salmon sales.  In the past if a product was not generating enough revenue for Sealanes we would increase the cost.

After analysing how these cost increases affected the customers buying patterns we could see that this was decreasing the amount of Salmon sales significantly.   We found that by reducing the cost dramatically this reduced the amount of profit per sale, but the overall amount of profit for ALL salmon sales, in that month, were much higher.  As the CFO, I am always cautious about spending money without understanding the value it will provide to the business.  With Business Objects Edge, I have already seen extreme value provided back to Sealanes and would advise any company to at least explore how to manage their information more successfully.”