Al Esayi Electronics standardises on Cognos 8 Business Intelligence

Al Esayi Electronics Co. is the sole agent/distributor for Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited of Japan, the world renowned manufacturer of Panasonic brands.

Al Esayi Electronics is a global organisation operating among several business units in diverse geographies. In a competitive, changing environment, the company needed to be able to spot trends, measure performance, evaluate alternatives, and make decisions quickly. Al Esayi's disparate reporting applications and spreadsheets contributed to significant data definition and integrity issues, as well as a lack of confidence in the numbers among its user community. The company recently completed a complex ERP migration to the Movex ERP system and wanted to increase its return on IT investment by providing better visibility for decision making and financial and operational performance management.

"Cognos allows us to answer our most important business questions with up-to-the-minute information, and offers a framework for enabling a complete performance management process across Al Esayi," said Samir Alwani, IT Director and Group IT Committee Chief, Al Esayi Electronics.

"With Cognos 8 BI, we can leverage our existing technology investments while providing managers across the organization with both the high-level view of the operations and the ability to drill down into the details to analyze underlying problems. By standardizing on Cognos, we can benefit from an advanced technical architecture, endorsed by leading analyst organizations, and deliver a simplified BI environment that improves user adoption and enables better decision making."

Originally, the company attempted to achieve these objectives with competitive offerings. However, Al Esayi was frustrated by too many non-integrated products that were difficult to administer and complex to use. As a result, Al Esayi turned to BSG, one of the leading information technology solutions companies in the Middle East and regional partner for Cognos, for help in achieving its vision for a complete BI solution. Al Esayi chose to work with BSG because of the company's dedicated focus on BI, strong and lasting presence in the region, and deep expertise in the retail segment.

Working with BSG, Al Esayi deployed Cognos 8 BI to help employees monitor store operations, inventory and item movement, sales, supply chain operations, vendor management, customer loyalty, advertising spend analysis, transaction analysis, finance, and human resources. In addition, BSG also helped build Cognos 8 BI scorecards for tracking store operations KPIs, profit and loss, merchandise margin analysis, and vendor performance. As a result, Al Esayi has been able to improve the collaboration and efficiency of its reporting processes, and track and analyze the factors behind its KPIs to maximize sales opportunities while controlling expenses. The company plans to continue its Cognos standardisation with budgeting and planning deployments later this year, and a data warehouse consolidation in 2007.

"The power and ease of Cognos 8 BI made the Al EsayiGroup's deployment fast and smooth," said Nasser Tufail, Managing Director, BSG. "With our experience in BI, we were able to quickly help Al Esayi establish a single version of the truth and focus attention to the actions required to drive the business forward. In addition, we have established a strong technology foundation for future Cognos implementations which will help the company look ahead and capitalise on future business opportunities."

"Leading global organisations such as Al Esayi Electronics are standardising on Cognos 8 BI as the platform for gaining better business insights and foundation for performance management," said Dave Laverty, senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer, Cognos. "In the competitive electronics market, the combination of Cognos BI and BSG's industry experience will help Al Esayi leverage existing technology investments while capitalizing on new business opportunities."

Cognos is a recognised leader in delivering performance management solutions for the retail industry. In fact, 25 per cent of the world's top 250 retailers, and over 300 retail chains worldwide, use Cognos. In addition to Al Esayi Electronics, other retail customers include amazon.com, American Eagle Outfitters, and 7-Eleven.