If you like to eat the occasional chocolate figure at Saint Nicholas or Easter, you have undoubtedly already become acquainted with Libeert in West Flanders. This family business from Komen has been selling chocolate products all over the world for around 100 years. As operational reporting was increasingly becoming a sales challenge, Libeert opted for BrightAnalytics.
“About two years ago we couldn’t ignore it any longer: we had to find a way to handle the operational reporting for our sales more efficiently”, starts Sam Blanckaert, Manager Finance & IT. “Making chocolate figures has been our specialty for 100 years. Today we also market tablets and pralines, both in Belgium and all over the world. However, making sales decisions was often cumbersome. Our ERP system was rich in data, but we needed a good reporting tool as well as clear communication about the figures.”
After a thorough market study, Libeert opted for BrightAnalytics. “A lot of systems turned out not to be ready for use, complicated and yet expensive. BrightAnalytics told us: ‘Provide the data, say what you want in terms of reporting, and we’ll make sure it runs’. They took full responsibility for developing the reports. They picked up our data from SAP, put it on their servers and used it to create reports that are accessible to the entire company. We had to invest very little time in it ourselves.”
Every night, the data from Libeert is uploaded by BrightAnalytics. This enables the company to monitor the sales evolution on a daily basis, at the customer, market and product level. Even though this remains an IT transaction, Sam is not worried. “We can perfectly follow up that nothing has gone wrong. That has not yet happened, but if it did, we know that we would be informed immediately and we can act quickly. BrightAnalytics monitors this as well, so we can run the application with peace of mind.”
Libeert also opted for BrightAnalytics at the financial level not much later. “We used to work in Excel. Today, thanks to the financial module, we have a daily insight into our income statement and balance sheet. The system shows our figures in the way that is convenient for us. Because it is graphically strong as well, the reports look nice and attractive. Reporting to the management has immediately become a lot easier. We can quickly identify the weak points in our various departments and, after consultation, we can make adjustments where necessary.
Sam considers the fact that BrightAnalytics’ tool works via the cloud an advantage. “Our figures can be consulted at any time. An internet connection and a password are sufficient. We can also easily set up authorizations, and thus determine who can see what. Finance and reporting have therefore become a shared responsibility. Since then, not only has our performance been transparent at lightning speed, but we all speak the same language when it comes to the figures.