Asian Distributor Gets a Handle on Financial and Inventory Data with QlikView

Published: February 7, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Count one more OS/400 shop as a happy user of QlikView, a Windows-based business intelligence product from QlikTech. The Swedish software company last month announced that FE Global Electronics, a $460-million electronic components distributors based in Singapore, has successfully deployed QlikView to reconcile disparate inventory and accounts receivable data.

Before deploying QlikView, fast-growing FE Global Electronics struggled to keep an accurate and up-to-date portrayal of its current inventory and financial positions. With 700 workers, more than 80 major suppliers, and 1,000 active customers, the company had a complex web of supplier and customer relationships to manage. Using manual methods of extracting data from its OS/400 server, its SAP ERP system, and other sources led to outdated and inaccurate data that hurt the company, so it decided to implement a business intelligence solution to standardize its methods.

The company's IT team initially investigated traditional OLAP products, but decided to go with QlikView after reviewing the product, says Tay Hung Chuan, senior IT manager for FE Global. "We liked the architecture of QlikView," he says. "The ease of data consolidation was a key consideration. At the same time, portability was important for our users throughout the region to work with the system online or offline, and only QlikView offered that."

The QlikView implementation was completed in a matter of weeks, a QlikTech official says.