Customer Success Story
Jedox takes Novoferm’s planning to the next level
Novoferm is one of the biggest door and shutter manufacturers in Europe. Since 2003, it has been part of the Japanese Sanwa Shutter Corporation, which is one of the leading garage door and shutter brands worldwide. The Sanwa Shutter Group has more than 9,000 employees, and conducts business worldwide through a network of 107 companies and thousands of partners.
Challenge
Insights and performance management for better decisions and more efficiency
Gerard ten Dam has been with Novoferm in the Netherlands as a Finance Manager for almost 30 years – and has never experienced a dull moment in the company. “Every year has brought new opportunities and challenges – it keeps you sharp and creates room to initiate changes and improvements,” he says. He has been involved in several takeovers, mergers, construction of new plants, expansions and international cooperation.
“As any finance professional, it is my first responsibility to see to proper control, order and overview. Having the right periodic input and output is the basic requisite to operate and, as things change, you have to be on top of things to get it right. Over the years, I have developed a pretty good antenna but, going forward, I felt it necessary to embed insight and performance management deeper into our organization. Besides better decision-making on other levels in the organization, we wanted to increase our efficiency and improve both our data analysis and collaboration.”
Solution
Implementation time, ease of use and maintenance: Always one step ahead with Jedox
In the search for a support software, Novoferm’s first concern was a smart connection to the existing ERP system that would free them from the constraints the SAP R/3 and SAP BW environments posed upon them.
Important factors that played a role in selecting Jedox were the short implementation time, ease of use and maintenance, and the initial investment in the software itself. From the outset, Jedox had a promising proposition compared to other reviewed tools. Having worked with Excel, Jedox immediately felt comfortable and the initial “quick wins” were easy to realize, as the requirements were largely based on the Excel sheets already in place. Novoferm quickly realized valuable insights regarding turnover, margins and results per year, region, customer, sales representative, product group and so forth. Also, after implementation, no additional involvement was needed from the IT department. Today, Novoferm has many happy Jedox users throughout the company.
Outcome
Saving time and creating better insights
Jedox business applications are intuitive, hardly require any explanation and insight is delivered much more quickly and reliably. Some of the reports that used to take two weeks to produce, now take less than two hours: a good example of the quick return on investment Novoferm has experienced. They are eager to pursue other Jedox solutions when they are ready to take the use of Jedox to the next level.
“It takes time to sharpen the way we want to drive the company and to define what information will further benefit our organization. It was our approach to build the first set of solutions, and I am confident that having a very clear view of the end result is vital to our success,” says ten Dam. Whatever business functionality Novoferm may define in the future, Jedox will have the ability to accommodate it.
Celcus B.V.
Celcus is a specialized consultancy company that helps companies and non-profit organizations meet their information challenges in two ways: by helping to design, build and maintain applications to meet the needs for intelligence and steering within an organization; and securing self-proficiency in the business by leveraging in-house capabilities in business intelligence and performance management. Celcus stands out through the accessibility of all the solutions it provides. The solutions are accessible in terms of price, speed of implementation and ease of maintenance. Some of the Celcus consultants have over 15 years of experience in the field of requirements analysis, BI/PM tooling, implementation, project management, change management and training.
