Axxon Bulgaria has correct data in seconds with new BI system [case study]

Do you have complete control over your data along with a 360-degree view of your business performance? If your answer is more of a no, then the following lines may be helpful to you in understanding how one of the country’s largest wholesalers has managed to achieve this.

Axxon Bulgaria AD is a company with over 30 years of history, during which time it has established itself as the preferred distribution, logistics, and marketing partner in the FMCG sector. The company operates in a large number of distribution channels – international and local retail chains, stand-alone grocery stores, pharmacies, drugstores, petrol stations, building and home maintenance stores, and other retail outlets selling goods to end customers. Eight regional offices provide nationwide coverage for Axxon Bulgaria.

How do you control a business of this size?

Axxon Bulgaria uses advanced technology and an ERP system to manage the business, which is upgraded with the Business Intelligence (BI) software Qlik Sense* successfully implemented by our team.

The need for additional reporting that could be accessed by all employees became necessary due to the nature of the work and as the company’s business grew.

After the implementation of the system, such reports are now made by any authorized employee with just a few clicks.

The BI software provides Axxon Bulgaria’s management with comprehensive information about the company’s operations, allowing management decisions to be based on correct data at any time.

BI plays a fundamental role in high-level strategy and provides strategic responses to market demands, helping Axxon Bulgaria to operate more efficiently, expand its competitive advantages, and increase profitability.

Qlik Sense generates dashboards and reports for Axxon Bulgaria that provide comprehensive answers to questions related to the company’s current business position. BI also adds great value to a wholesaler’s existing ERP system and generally speaking creates pre-defined reports, allows users to create reports themselves, and simplifies the consolidation of multiple processes.

The solution is Qlik Sense, and the consultant – Balkan Services

Within a few months, the team of Axxon Bulgaria studied the BI market. In the process of selecting a solution and consultant, the company consulted trusted business partners who had their own BI software. It turned out that one of the company’s most serious partners in Bulgaria was also using Qlik Sense.

Аlready during the preliminary meetings and the impressive presentations that Balkan Services made for us, it became clear to us that the team of this consulting company is great and we get along with just “one” word,” says Ivaylo Krastanov, Sales Manager at Axxon Bulgaria, about his first impressions of working with us.

Even in cases where we were not sure what we wanted, the Balkan Services team was very sensitive in guiding us, according to their experience, to the things that would be useful to us,” adds Iliana Simeonova.

One example of the above is the additional categorizations of Axxon Bulgaria’s brands – four levels of sub-categories have been created. In the words of the Axxon team, the scales in favor of the Qlik Sense business analytics system were tipped by the software’s functionality to display all the information needed, not only in tabular form but also as a graph.

The stages of the project and their challenges

The system covered all the reports in the Sales, Finance, Logistics, and Marketing departments, as well as a common corporate dashboard, prepared for strategic purposes and covering key indicators from the different areas.

The first part of the project that our team implemented started with a detailed business analysis of sales.

We looked at all the sales processes – how discounts are set, how items are delivered, what orders Axxon uses, and how they are accounted for in the company’s system,” explains Dimitar Prodanov.

The main focus here is the automation of reporting, as until then all reports for the sales department were prepared manually and had to be ready every day by a certain time.

What we did was to automate the input of these results, thus eliminating the need for a serious set of reports to be generated daily,” says Dimitar Prodanov.

So now any authorized employee can log into the BI tool at the moment they need the information and see it not only in tabular form but also graphically. This, in turn, enables more reasoning and deeper analysis.

As a consequence, our team also created functionality for generating annual financial statements according to Bulgarian standards.

We have also implemented some pure accounting reports that are not available in global ERP systems, such as the one used by Axxon, and are complicated to develop – general ledger, turnover sheet, account history, balance sheet, income statement (P&L) according to Bulgarian standards, and the business analytics tool allows to apply various filters and adjustments when generating the reports themselves in the process of their calculation. For example, new items are reported in the accounts, and comparisons can be made for years back.

At any time, the employees and management of Axxon Bulgaria can view historical data since 2002, and with enviable speed.

“Axxon has a lot of data and generating even standard accounting reports used to take a long time on their ERP system. What we have been able to do is enable the accounting department to look at the data from the larger financial reports every day and at a speed that was unthinkable at the time,” explains Dimitar Prodanov.

According to Iliana Simeonova, the biggest challenge during the project was precisely aligning the figures between the new BI tool and the existing ERP system, which is one of the largest in the world.

Once these parts were completed, our team started working on two rather challenging stages of the project.

The first of these was the creation of a functional P&L. During this stage, the opportunity was created for the client to define the methodology by which P&L is reported and how revenue covers expenses. Subsequently, information such as net profit at the level of offices, product groups, brands, customers, chains, market types, distribution channels, etc. is displayed in a matter of seconds.

This stage of the project presents the operational way of conducting business and enables to track its development in the last five years.

The second stage of the project involved the creation of a cash flow report that is specific and different from the report that is made in accounting systems.

The key here was to see not how the business was doing through sales, but through how cash was moving. The challenge here was to generate reports similar to the P&L statement, but on a cash flow basis,” says Balkan Services’ senior managing BI consultant. He adds, “This way, Axxon can easily assess whether it can afford to make larger deliveries to restock with goods at spot prices because it expects them to rise in the future. And this, as we know, leads to bigger discounts and thus increases the margin.”

Once this stage of the project is finalized, the next step is to create a company-level dashboard. In it, over 100 key performance indicators have been generated that come from parts of the project that have already been implemented – accounting, sales, finance, and logistics. The combination of these four main areas is brought together on a common dashboard, designed for management and showing the different perspectives in one place.

Qlik Sense Dashboard

Discounts, customers, availability, here are the key indicators

Thanks to the new BI tool, the company’s chief accountant has a timesheet and a general ledger literally in two clicks.

Axxon Bulgaria’s sales department can now monitor key indicators such as turnover by product group, proactive customers, and open credit the company has in the market daily.

Another lever of the commercial activity has found its easier tracking, namely the giving of discounts that Axxon Bulgaria works with different customers.

The promotional prices are different every month, through the BI software we can get information daily about the average discount we work with a customer for a certain period, for a certain category, for a certain product group,” explains Ivaylo Krastanov.

From a marketing point of view, with its new BI software Axxon Bulgaria easily understands how discounts affect sales.

In addition to integration with the company’s existing ERP system, our team also performed integration with Axxon Bulgaria’s logistics software. This way, employees can easily get information about warehouse inventory, track stock turnover, and estimate how long it takes them to process an order.

“Our company sells a lot of food. So we find it extremely useful to keep track of where each item has gone. Using the BI tool, we keep track of batch numbers by the customer, by delivery, by the office, and also expiry dates. With literally five clicks I can track an invoice, what it says, and what its expiry date is, which is extremely important given all the regulations,” explains Ivaylo Krastanov.

A major factor in the success of the project is the persistence of both Balkan Services and Axxon Bulgaria.

Axxon’s IT manager and finance manager were committed to the project, responsive when needed, and willing to implement the BI tool successfully,” says Dimitar Prodanov

Ivaylo Krastanov adds that he believes that the ease with which our team is easy to work is the basis of the project’s success formula.

Axxon Bulgaria: The BI tool is used by everyone and everyone is happy

An immediate benefit of the new business analytics software is the reliability and credibility of the data it contains, which all its users receive – senior management, the sales department, the finance department, the accounting department, the logistics department, the IT department, and the managers of the regional offices.

The BI tool also helps to better control and reduce margins. The business intelligence tool facilitates planning based on the constraints the company has for deliveries to certain chains. An example of this is inventory control, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of shelf life.

“Retail chains want 75% minimum remaining shelf life. So, if we have 200 bottles of olive oil in our office in Plovdiv with a 90% sell-by date, we practically cannot use them,” explains Ivaylo Krystanov.

The BI tool also allows us to compare past periods very quickly.

“Now we monitor what is happening in real-time with our business. At the next stage, we may also set the system to track targets by the merchant,” says the team at Axxon Bulgaria.

He adds that Qlik Sense saves time because, before the implementation of the solution, a reference could take a whole day, but today it is done in seconds. In addition, the functionality to make different cuts on reports makes the company more flexible.

We would like to thank Balkan Services for the solution they built for us. We use it not only daily, but also most often among the other software developments we have with us!”, says Ivaylo Krastanov in conclusion.

At Balkan Services we have expert knowledge of business, technology, and legislation, and we speak all three languages. We will listen carefully and advise you on choosing the right business system for your needs.

Balkan Services has been implementing business software solutions since 2006 and has completed more than 690 projects, of which more than 420 are in the area of BI software. We follow a proven implementation methodology with clear steps and best practice know-how.