Democratizing Data Across a Dynamic Business With Qlik

The retail and manufacturing industries have had many new challenges due to COVID-19. As a leading action sports apparel company, La Jolla Group has persevered during this time. Now more than ever we rely on a holistic view of our forecasting, sales and production data. We have democratized this data empowering users from across the business to make well-informed business decisions, quickly. That’s where Qlik has shown real superiority over other platforms like Power BI and Tableau.

Qlik’s predictive analytics capabilities, inherent simplicity and flexibility have been game-changers for us. Qlik’s value to our business is clear. We’ve undergone a huge digital transformation across the organization, spanning production, sales, planning and our warehouse. Now, every department has a specific Qlik app to analyze the data relevant to their team and brand. It allows us to track against KPIs and discuss specific needs. Most importantly, this discipline has freed employees up to focus on their jobs.

La Jolla Group has made investments in other BI platforms and I’ve even attended demos for Tableau and Power BI, but we already have everything we need with Qlik. We have the whole Microsoft suite, including Power BI but we choose not to use it. Qlik outperforms Power BI every time.

Making Data Available for All

Over the past year, we’ve been making changes to become a more data-driven organization. As the literal lifeline of our business, our warehouse has undergone the biggest transformation.

The speed and flexibility of Qlik’s solutions meant we were able to develop an app in Qlik Sense in 2-3 weeks that encapsulated everything we needed to see in real-time for our warehouse. This includes shipping, sales and stock orders across each and every brand we own. Since deploying the app our Warehouse Manager has become something of a Qlik “super user” and a proponent of upskilling other team members while showing the potential of the Qlik solution.

Ensuring It’s Easy to Use and Analyze

Qlik’s ease-of-use and accessibility are so important to us as we scale. It ensures that everyone has access to the data they need. This was one of the main reasons we chose to use Qlik over Power BI. It’s so simple to use, even for those who don’t have a background in analytics. Users can drill down into deep datasets, but for those that don’t need all the details, such as the warehouse and sales managers, they can easily access executive summary dashboards that provide everything they need at their fingertips.

And through Qlik’s data analysis we’ve made real-life savings for our bottom line. For example, by looking at our shipping forecasting via Qlik Sense, we spotted we were on the verge of being charged premium rates for going over our weekly limit of shipping orders. By getting ahead of the potential issue through forecasting and modeling our shipping projects, we were able to restructure our approach and make a significant savings for the business. The whole thing was fixed within a day and how often can you say that about any problem?

It’s been an overwhelming time for the business – as it has been for many retailers around the world - but with Qlik we’ve been able to adapt quickly. Qlik Sense helps bridge comfort levels with data across the business – so we can cater to those who need deep, rich insights and those who just need the top-line view.

Qlik offers unmatched performance and usability – it’s set the bar high for our BI platforms and we won’t be settling for anything less in the future!

La Jolla Group will tell you, there’s #NoPlaceLikeQlik - w/ @Qlik Sense they’ve made top-line savings & democratized #data across the business