Goodfellow Shores Up Business With Enhanced Reporting

WebFOCUS Improves Company-Wide Information Flow

Like the rest of the construction sector, the recent economic downturn hit Goodfellow Inc. hard. A wholesaler and distributor of wood and wood byproducts with CAN$500-million in annual revenues and operations in Nova Scotia and Quebec, the company is known for providing the highest quality pressure-treated wood products, but was seeing a dwindling number of construction projects as well as clients going out of business.

Goodfellow knew it needed better insight into key operations to maintain its position as an industry leader and its reputation for expertise in lumber processing and customer satisfaction. The company wanted a solution that could maximize efficiency and facilitate just-in-time business models – a strategy made even more critical by diminishing cash flow.

Goodfellow deployed Information Builders' WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) platform to gain greater visibility into sales, inventory, budgeting and finance, product management, and more. It gives users across the entire company instant access to the pertinent information they need to most effectively perform their jobs – without always relying on IT staff. WebFOCUS also enables the company to keep supply levels as low as possible by allowing stakeholders to constantly scrutinize forecasts, pending orders, and supply chain activity. This way, just enough product is on hand to satisfy immediate customer needs. With WebFOCUS in place, the company firmly believes it cannot just survive this slow period, but also become stronger.

Constructing a New BI Environment

Until recently, the IT group at Goodfellow struggled with an issue very common in large enterprises: All requests for information were routed to the IT department. Fulfilling these requests was very time-consuming for IT Director Graham Rattray and his group, so they needed to implement some major changes in the way information flowed throughout the company.

The IT team began investigating business intelligence tools to remove the burden and create a more efficient enterprise. They were primed to deploy a BI solution from Cognos when they learned about WebFOCUS.

"As soon as we saw what WebFOCUS could do, our attention immediately shifted," Rattray recalls. "We instantly liked its flexibility and connectivity, especially its ability to directly connect to the DB2 databases on our AS/400 computer. It didn't feel like we were bringing in a new platform; we could run it right away with our existing systems. Cognos would have required substantial up-front work to achieve similar connectivity. Information Builders' pricing terms were also very attractive."

Goodfellow purchased WebFOCUS Reporting Server, ReportCaster, Developer Studio, and the DB2-AS/400 adapter. WebFOCUS runs on a Windows platform and accesses information directly from the DB2 databases. Unlike their previous reporting solution, it enables powerful drill-down functionality. Along with select members of his team, Rattray took a series of courses with Information Builders Education to help them understand the technology and its capabilities.

Information Builders Professional Services helped Goodfellow to build ten crucial reports to field common information requests from their homegrown AS/400 applications. For example, the sales application permits everyone – from senior officers to sales reps – to glean daily, monthly, and annual sales information about product lines and SKUs from an intuitive, parameterized report. Fifty people use it regularly.

"The sales application is our largest WebFOCUS system," Rattray says. "We have tied it into many different areas of our business."

Goodfellow also relies on WebFOCUS ReportCaster to send daily sales information to sales reps as e-mail attachments. Gilles Benoit, an IT professional at Goodfellow who was chosen to lead the WebFOCUS project and later became the company's primary WebFOCUS developer, pre-sets the schedule and the sales reps simply subscribe to the reports they need, at the frequency they require.

"ReportCaster has been a revolutionary tool for us," Rattray says. "It has enabled a paperless environment for distributing information. Everything our users need is delivered to them. They can drill down into the reports for even more specific data if they desire."

A Foundation for Enterprise Reporting

Other standard reports streamline business processes in shipping, accounts payable, accounts receivables, orders, credits, and the call center. For instance, the Daily Orders report, which is sent to every salesperson, shows all the details of each account and whether orders are in an open or prepared status. This helps the reps to stay current with their accounts and to ensure that expected revenue comes in and pending orders are filled.

Authorized users can customize these reports through a WebFOCUS dashboard that has tabs to represent inventory, receivables, accounts payable, finance, and other areas of the business. The tabs lead to different types of reports with multiple options for selecting and analyzing the data, using user-friendly drop-down menus and selection buttons. Users can enter parameters to qualify the reports by type of customer, product, and other variables, including the ability to look back through seven years of historical information.

"WebFOCUS has given our staff the freedom to access information whenever they wish," says Rattray. "Previously, general information came to users in ten different groups. They had to pick through it to find what was germane to their domain. Now they can drill into data whenever they want, and quickly access reports about their business group. WebFOCUS makes everyone more productive and efficient. For example, we have seen a vast improvement in the way inventory is managed."

The BI system has also had a major impact on the financial department by enabling them to close the books faster and make mid-month corrections if expected sales fall short of forecasts.

"Our finance department was on board with this project from the outset, since they had a pressing need for BI technology," Rattray says. "Once we saw the demo, selecting WebFOCUS was a no-brainer."

While Rattray says it's hard to compute a precise return on their BI investments, the fact that Goodfellow is thriving while many of its competitors are closing their doors, speaks volumes about the effectiveness of its information systems. "Our business runs because of information," he states. "Users have become accustomed to the way WebFOCUS delivers this information day to day. If the BI system vanished tomorrow, it would be a major setback to the organization."

WebFOCUS Active Reports will soon provide sales reps with even greater flexibility by permitting them to sort, summarize, and filter information while they are disconnected from the network, such as when they are visiting clients in the field. The IT team also plans to create new KPIs for finance officers, sales managers, and product managers, and to use exception reports to alert them to changes within their purview, such as when inventory falls below minimum levels or when expenses are about to exceed a budget. "Our inventory is our bread and butter," explains Rattray. "If it's not managed properly, it has a ripple effect throughout the company."

Rattray estimates that he is spending 30 percent less time developing reports, enabling him to more effectively manage his team. "WebFOCUS has taken a huge burden off the IT group while making the entire organization function more efficiently," he summarizes. "It's the foundation for many new projects ­– we always look first to WebFOCUS to see how it could support what we want to accomplish. For example, we are considering a new financial package and WebFOCUS will be instrumental for extracting information and interfacing with related applications. It is a key component of everything we do."