Bike company peddles the benefits of BI

Giant Bicycle finds a business intelligence (BI) solution vital to its everyday operations, especially in the sales department, according to a recent press release. The bicycle company has been using BI software from TARGIT and upgraded to a newer version about two years ago.

Jean Scott, IT business analyst at Giant, says, “Sales management can’t live without it; it is used on a daily basis.” Because Giant sends multiple orders and shipments each day, its purchasing, sales and accounting departments use information about those transactions every day.

“A tool like TARGIT gives us the ability to look at all that information easily,” Scott says. “The sales department benefits from on-the-fly analyses. Ad hoc reporting is easy to create with the solution, saving time and resources. The sales management team uses the analysis capabilities to create reports showing statistics based on all levels.”

“With the solution,” Scott continues, “it is easy for the sales department to get an instant overview of the best-selling bike and the different categories of products and to act accordingly, hence improving Giant’s position in the market.”

According to the press release from TARGIT, Giant’s favorite feature is the drill-down capability of the solution. Scott says, “I like the ability to create multiple objects in an analysis and to drill into the criteria affecting the other objects. Most people are used to the traditional, flat Excel reports, but once they see the multi-object drill-down feature, they see other possibilities in using the tool to get the data more efficiently. Since the upgrade, we have expanded the usefulness of the tool. It is an integrated part of the daily business process. I don’t know how we would function without TARGIT.”