Victory Packaging Wraps Up Enterprise Reporting Needs With WebFOCUS

Self-Service Reporting and Analysis System Eliminates Manual Processes for Leading Distribution Company

Based in Houston, Texas, Victory Packaging is a leading North American distributor of end-to-end packaging and supply-chain solutions that help customers reduce overall expenses. The privately held company has a long history of delivering superior products and services to its customers. More than 1,200 employees serve customers via five million square feet of warehouse space in 64 distribution and support centers nationwide.

An aggressive corporate acquisition program has positioned Victory Packaging as a nationally recognized player in the packaging industry, but the company learned that rapid growth by acquisition can have a downside. Consolidating operating procedures, personnel, and facilities presents disruptions that can drain company resources and impact productivity. As the company expanded it quickly became apparent that its legacy PICK enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was woefully inadequate to handle burgeoning customer demands.

What followed was a massive 18-month conversion to implement a wholesale distribution and supply-chain execution software package from International Business Systems (IBS). Although this new information system helped bring company operations up to speed, Victory Packaging lacked a business intelligence (BI) tool that could aggregate data from this system, analyze it, and deliver timely information to company decision-makers.

Victory Packaging selected the Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform to replace manual reporting processes with applications that enable self-service reporting. In less than six months, the company created powerful end-user reporting applications and dashboards for managing sales, finance, and inventory. From sales representatives to executives, employees can now click on graphs and drill into operational metrics – tracking sales, managing budgets, verifying inventory, and automating a host of other operational tasks. They can also be proactive in suggesting integrated packaging solutions that improve their customers' business processes while cutting costs.

"Victory Packaging competes on service and support, so having an agile, efficient workforce is imperative," says Eugene Hope, chief information officer for Victory Packaging. "We can't operate effectively without the right information in our hands when we need it. WebFOCUS automates user reporting and gives us a single tool for query and analysis. It's the state-of-the-art technology we need to control internal processes in our growing business and provide the service our customers expect."

Packaged Innovation Takes on Enterprise Challenges

Victory Packaging evaluated 15 BI vendors, including MicroStrategy, IBM/Cognos, and Information Builders. Victory insisted on a BI platform that could simultaneously access applications and combine data from AS/400 and Microsoft Windows platforms. According to Hope, having a BI platform that can run on both the AS/400-iSeries and Windows/Intel platforms is critical because it gives them more flexibility about where data and applications can be located. Hope and his team were drawn to WebFOCUS for its ability to provide a total solution, gathering disparate data and presenting it through parameterized reports.

"We had to get usable, real-time information about sales, finance, and customer accounts out of the new IBS system and deliver it quickly to our decision-makers," states Hope. "We needed reports that were user friendly and not only showed us if we had a problem, but also gave us the flexibility to drill down into the details to analyze why the numbers weren't what we were expecting."

Victory Packaging engaged Information Builders Professional Services to help develop its initial BI applications under a tight implementation deadline. The first application to go online was the Daily Flash Report, a parameterized report that is automatically delivered to executives and sales representatives via e-mail each day. Users can immediately drill into customer accounts, right down to the item level. For example, branch managers can review sales figures to see what products are selling, which sales representatives are making the sales, and whether those sales are meeting projections. They can look at an account, select a figure, drill into it to see what makes up that number, and compare it to the previous night's billing. The company immediately recognized the system's value and was quick to embrace the new functionality.

"Feedback from our users has been tremendous," says Hope. "Each BI application we roll out is greeted with rave reviews, and the process is seamless. We're pulling information directly from native AS/400 and Microsoft SQL Server databases, loading it into the WebFOCUS database, and reporting against that."

Detailed customer information also provides sales managers with greater insight into shifting customer and market trends so they can develop more effective sales strategies. Victory Packaging has built its reputation around developing comprehensive, integrated solutions that save money for customers, and WebFOCUS provides the information the company needs to provide exceptional service.

Parceling Out Data in Real-Time

After successfully rolling out the Daily Flash Report, the IT team updated financial reporting processes and created an operational dashboard to display the results. Historically, financial managers measured performance by adding up figures manually in an Excel spreadsheet.

"In our old manual scenario, stakeholders got the numbers and then had to take them to someone else to find out exactly what happened to support those numbers," Hope explains. "We were never sure if the numbers were accurate and current since they were derived from private spreadsheets and other sources."

Now, accurate reporting, based on daily updates of operational and financial data in a secure BI environment, helps Victory Packaging meet business objectives and address changing industry conditions. Executives use the self-service reporting environment to sort and display financial data through colorful interactive graphs. Using a wide array of other sorting options, they can drill down into specific cost center branches to review data, such as sales measured against budget, products sold, gross profit dollars, gross profit percent, and sales against projections.

With the old system, financial information – a preliminary income statement followed several days later by a final statement – didn't reach managers until the end of the month. The new BI environment can deliver a financial statement every day, with real-time and historic data available for ad hoc reporting and analysis.

Sales data is also available daily so sales reps can compare projections to revenue, check the accuracy of forecasts, and determine if budgets are tracking to plan. WebFOCUS Active Technology reports enable the contents of these reports to be sorted, filtered, calculated, and charted offline – even when reps are on the road and have no network or Internet access.

Lowering On-Hand Inventory

The decline in manufacturing and downturn in the housing market have changed packaging industry dynamics, so keeping a watchful eye on inventory is critical to the success of a distribution company. To meet economic demands, Victory Packaging has scaled back, using WebFOCUS data to cut its on-hand inventory by more than 25 percent.

"We distribute a wide variety of items – from boxes to cushion packaging to furniture covers to dollies to bungee cords and strapping tape – and also manage customer-specific inventory where customers reimburse us for unused inventory," Hope points out. "Keeping track of inventory is crucial, and we couldn't do it successfully without a BI environment."

From executives to shipping clerks, WebFOCUS keeps people informed of inventory status. With the proper authorization, they can track a rolling 12-month inventory, compare the current year against a past year, show aged inventory and inventory turns, analyze percent of aged to value of inventory, and many other essential metrics.

For example, a manager can pull up a graph and select a cost center to instantly see the value of the inventory, check on any aged inventory problems, drill into an inventory family (such as corrugated boxes), and drill down to the item level. This used to take several reports, and perhaps days, but users now get their answers immediately and are secure knowing that they have the right information.

"The true value of WebFOCUS is that current up-to-date data is available on a real-time basis," states Hope. "It helps us tighten up our inventory controls."

Four Victory Packaging employees attended brief training classes to help create the initial reports. Since then, employees have needed no further formal training; they implement add-on applications on their own with only limited support from Information Builders.

"We've been especially impressed with WebFOCUS' ease of use for both developers and users," says Hope. "Today we have about 130 employees using it – and more clamoring to be added."

These decision-makers applaud the scope and utility of Information Builders' products, and plan to extend their BI capabilities with additional applications. Building on the success of the sales, financial, and inventory initiatives, the company plans to bring BI to the purchasing department. It also wants to implement WebFOCUS Performance Management Framework (PMF) to create a closed-loop system for defining, monitoring, and measuring critical operational metrics via an intuitive browser-based environment.

"We are expecting a rapid return on our investment in the new BI system," states Hope. "Already it has allowed everyone, from senior executives to line managers, to make better business decisions with the quality of the data they have. We're all working off the same numbers, agreeing on the same facts. We have one version of the truth."