Information Builders Case Studies WebFOCUS Streamlines Sales Reporting at Arata

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	WebFOCUS Streamlines Sales Reporting at Arata Information Builders

WebFOCUS Streamlines Sales Reporting at Arata

Information Builders

Technology Category	Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Applicable Industries	Retail
Applicable Functions	Sales & Marketing
Use Cases	Predictive Quality Analytics Supply Chain Visibility
Services	Data Science Services
Challenge	Arata Corporation, a leading Japanese wholesale distributor of household products, was facing challenges with its sales reporting process. The company's sales representatives were spending a significant amount of time and effort using Microsoft Excel to create monthly sales reports for each individual retailer that does business with the company. This process was cumbersome and resulted in inconsistencies. Arata needed a way to streamline the steps involved in preparing these reports. The company sought a solution that could be used as a common sales reporting tool for all staff, automating the entire process of retrieving and summarizing sales data, and outputting the results into formatted reports and charts. Read More
About Customer	Arata Corporation is a leading Japanese wholesale distributor of health and beauty, toiletry, paper, household, and pet products. The Tokyo-based company, founded in 2002, is the result of the merger of between Daika, ITOI, and Sanbic. As a wholesale company that connects manufacturers and retailers, Arata relies on its ability to provide vital information to customers on both sides. The company provides retailers and other customers with monthly summary reports, which highlight sales figures by product category. Before implementing WebFOCUS, Arata had an internally-developed database query tool called dbQuest, which was widely used to retrieve information from a range of enterprise data sources. However, dbQuest did not offer the ability to generate formatted reports based on that data, which made the information difficult to use. Read More
Solution	Arata Corporation decided to implement the WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform, through Information Builders partner Ashisuto. WebFOCUS serves as the foundation of a new sales performance reporting system known as Genesis. This new environment has increased the efficiency of sales activities and empowered users to rapidly create professionally-styled sales reports, regardless of their skill set. Genesis has been so successful that Arata plans to expand the use of WebFOCUS across the organization, making it the company’s standard web reporting solution. The development of Genesis began with the support of Ashisuto, which worked hand-in-hand with Arata’s internal developers so it could learn how to develop reports independently. Because WebFOCUS is so intuitive, developers were expected to be up and running in an estimated five days, compared to the months it would have taken for them to learn other development tools. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics

Applicable Industries

Retail

Applicable Functions

Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Predictive Quality Analytics

Supply Chain Visibility

Services

Data Science Services

Challenge

Arata Corporation, a leading Japanese wholesale distributor of household products, was facing challenges with its sales reporting process. The company's sales representatives were spending a significant amount of time and effort using Microsoft Excel to create monthly sales reports for each individual retailer that does business with the company. This process was cumbersome and resulted in inconsistencies. Arata needed a way to streamline the steps involved in preparing these reports. The company sought a solution that could be used as a common sales reporting tool for all staff, automating the entire process of retrieving and summarizing sales data, and outputting the results into formatted reports and charts.

About Customer

Arata Corporation is a leading Japanese wholesale distributor of health and beauty, toiletry, paper, household, and pet products. The Tokyo-based company, founded in 2002, is the result of the merger of between Daika, ITOI, and Sanbic. As a wholesale company that connects manufacturers and retailers, Arata relies on its ability to provide vital information to customers on both sides. The company provides retailers and other customers with monthly summary reports, which highlight sales figures by product category. Before implementing WebFOCUS, Arata had an internally-developed database query tool called dbQuest, which was widely used to retrieve information from a range of enterprise data sources. However, dbQuest did not offer the ability to generate formatted reports based on that data, which made the information difficult to use.

Solution

Arata Corporation decided to implement the WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform, through Information Builders partner Ashisuto. WebFOCUS serves as the foundation of a new sales performance reporting system known as Genesis. This new environment has increased the efficiency of sales activities and empowered users to rapidly create professionally-styled sales reports, regardless of their skill set. Genesis has been so successful that Arata plans to expand the use of WebFOCUS across the organization, making it the company’s standard web reporting solution. The development of Genesis began with the support of Ashisuto, which worked hand-in-hand with Arata’s internal developers so it could learn how to develop reports independently. Because WebFOCUS is so intuitive, developers were expected to be up and running in an estimated five days, compared to the months it would have taken for them to learn other development tools.

Impact #1	WebFOCUS has reduced the time needed to create sales reports by as much as ten to 20 percent.
Impact #2	Customers now receive high-quality information in just a fraction of the time.
Impact #3	Sales representatives are now freed from the stress of working with Excel, so they can focus more on what they need to do.

Impact #1

WebFOCUS has reduced the time needed to create sales reports by as much as ten to 20 percent.

Impact #2

Customers now receive high-quality information in just a fraction of the time.

Impact #3

Sales representatives are now freed from the stress of working with Excel, so they can focus more on what they need to do.

Benefit #1	Time saved in creating sales reports translated into a significant cost reduction.

Benefit #1

Time saved in creating sales reports translated into a significant cost reduction.

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Overview

WebFOCUS Streamlines Sales Reporting at Arata

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit