Customer Spotlight: Harvesting Multiple Data Sources
AGCO covers more acreage by connecting 25 disparate databases with Qlik.
I can remember my first high school job: working on a farm. I was tasked with picking everything from cherry tomatoes to onions to flowers but I also had to pull weeds, pot plants and many other tasks.
One time, I was asked to clear out brush for a chicken coop with a weed wacker…which was a slow-going process if you’ve ever tried it. Only after my boss handed me a gas-powered brush cutter with a saw blade attached did I start to realize the importance of using the right tool to get the job done.
At AGCO, they are in the business of providing the right tools – namely farm equipment – to growers through dealers all over the world. Founded in 1990, they supply over 3,100 equipment dealers in over 140 countries. AGCO’s product lines include 2 and 4-wheel drive tractors, harvester combines, hay balers, planters and sprayers in addition to a thriving parts business. Keeping track of all that internal and external data is not an easy task, especially when your organization is making acquisitions to grow the business. Data existed on as many as 25 different databases and AGCO’s Director, Advanced Technology Solutions and Commercial Strategic Initiatives Eric Lescourret wanted to standardize the way the company analyzed that data:
“Everyone had their own measurement when we got started, there were multiple versions of the truth. This was why we created the C-DIVE: Commercial – Data Insights Visualization Engine app. It enables AGCO to better track commercial activities as well as our ability to execute our marketing and sales plan, helping us to achieve our retail and market share targets.”
For Lescourret, there was only one way to build that app: using Qlik. He tapped the right specialists for the job in Qlik partner iMaps in order to get up and running quickly. Lescourret wanted to map out the full customer journey in one place and that would make it easier to manage the dealers who AGCO sold to. He named internal KPI owners at each level of the business who would be charged with monitoring their data and helping the commercial organization reach established quarterly and annual goals. Each KPI owner was given the ability to measure against annual revenue, market share and industry levels, by product segment, number of units sold, total dollars sold and many other options.
It didn’t take long for the C-DIVE app to catch on, currently there are 65 users who are all active in the app on a regular basis. These users include District Directors and Product Marketing Managers, Technical and Field Marketing Managers, the Training Department and Finance as well, among others.
The app, as you can see, is completely self-service and offers the ability to drilldown into individual product sales by retailer and by Sales Director. It also allows users to measure against benchmarks from previous quarters and against market share metrics, separated by product line from prior months.
What’s just as important is tracking inventory: the process of buying farm equipment isn’t all that dissimilar from buying a car. Every year a new model will come out and the prior year’s model depreciates, which means it’s critical to know what models each dealer has left on their lot.
Finally, not only is it valuable to know what inventory remains in each dealers’ store, but also where those dealers are located. Is there an established trend that farmers in one region prefer a specific tractor model or is a product in danger of selling out too fast? Any C-DIVE user can use a world map and find out exactly where those trends exist.
There are numerous other metrics that AGCO is keeping track of using the C-DIVE app including number of product demos conducted for each region, customer retention, future sales forecasting, order requirements, inventory levels and weather’s effect on purchases, lead conversion and MUCH more. But instead let’s have Lescourret do some of the talking when it comes to what Qlik has meant for AGCO:
“By using Qlik we were able to cut our time spent on reporting and analysis by 25%. If I was working 60 hours before, I am only working 45 hours now. For less than $100,000? Our return is laughable, we’ve made back 100s and 100s of thousands of dollars. We can really save time now by concentrating on the right things with Qlik.”
