Morson Group selects Intuitive Dashboards over "really, really expensive" QlikView

Recruitment firm claims it will save £123,902 per annum by implementing the solution

Oil and gas sector recruitment firm Morson Group has selected Intuitive Dashboards over alternatives including QlikView, claiming that the firm will save £123,902 annually as a result of implementing the solution.

Morson identified that using spreadsheets to display data to clients was not effective enough, and started looking at the market to differentiate itself from its competitors. Its clients wanted access to reliable data that was presented graphically.

"People can understand information much more easily when they see it presented graphically, and also have a lot more confidence in it. With spreadsheets, they seem to get lost in the data in no time," Stinus Andersen, business systems and compliance manager at Morson Group, explained.

Andersen told Computing that he was always a big fan of dashboards, so the firm started looking at the different propositions in the dashboard market.

"Most players are American and huge and extremely expensive," said Anderson. "We kept having demos, and it was a lot more [functionality] than we needed - we are not Bank of America."

Another problem, Andersen said, was that the vendors were based in the US, meaning that when he had any questions he would have to wait for someone from California to call him back.

"Just by searching online I came across Intuitive, who are based in Manchester. Their product is relatively simple compared to the big players but it also means it is easy to use and requires a short implementation," he explained.

"We wanted a UK-based provider who could offer exceptional customer service, ongoing technical support, and that was as interested in our business needs and objectives as we were.

"After looking at three dashboard solutions in detail, Intuitive Dashboards' simple and easy-to-use capabilities and very fast return on investment made it the obvious choice for us."

QlikView was "really, really expensive" according to Andersen, and the functionality of some of the bigger US players, including QlikView, was to enable any department to develop their own dashboards. This wasn't something that Morson Group needed.

"We do it centrally and not department by department, so I have a business analyst who works on it with me, so I didn't need the ability for everyone to do it. The Intuitive solution better suits a company of our size," he said.

"In terms of pricing, any dashboard provider is a bit like buying a car: you find out how much the car is and then realise that the rest you have to pay for as add-ons. With Intuitive, it was this price and that was it, and that's what really got me on board."

The real clincher, he said, was the support Morson received from the technical team.

"They spent time analysing our needs, giving us full confidence in the process we were to embark upon," he said.

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Morson Group selects Intuitive Dashboards over "really, really expensive" QlikView

Recruitment firm claims it will save £123,902 per annum by implementing the solution

Since deploying the dashboards Morson Group claims to have saved over £120,000 per annum, taking into account efficiency savings of £1,100 per week, human error savings of £559 per week and administration savings of £733 per week.

According to Andersen, the numbers were calculated following a study. He said that the dashboards have also helped the firm to see a four per cent increase in sales conversions. He admitted that this was not the sole cause, but suggested that it had "a huge impact" nevertheless.

One area where the company had to invest as a result of taking on the dashboards was a data warehouse. Andersen explained that putting the Intuitive Dashboards straight into a production system "would kill it" and would result in data being slow in getting out.

And, although the firm's clients may have found it easier to drill down into the data, Anderson admitted that the shift from spreadsheets has not been an easy one.

"Change is not something people like. We found people that have worked here for years finding it difficult to look at the dashboards, but clients absolutely love them because they're not used to the old ways of doing things," he said.

The next step is for the firm to make the dashboards available on mobile devices. Morson has plans to equip all directors with iPads, for example, but as the application runs on Microsoft Silverlight, this is not yet possible.

"It is the number one priority for Intuitive to bring the dashboard to mobile devices. I've seen the test versions of it, and I can't wait to use it," Andersen said.