Gearing up for the 11th CFO Strategies Forum MENA, MAP shared with us how they used their platform Qlik to increase Amadeus’ performance incredibly.
“We can now see, in near real-time, sales figures and profit and loss analysis by customer, country and region instead of waiting for out-of-date static monthly reports that often did not reconcile.”
– Graham Nichols, Managing Director, Amadeus Gulf
Amadeus, a global leader in technology for the travel and tourism industry, based in Madrid, has a distribution company called Amadeus Gulf based in the UAE, where it has significant market share. The Amadeus booking system is installed on more than 7000 travel agency point-of-sale terminals in the Gulf region. Agents can make bookings on local and global carriers as well as with hotels, car rental firms, insurance companies, tour operators, and other services related to leisure and business travel.
Amadeus Gulf seeks BI tool to help analyze profitability of travel agency accounts
Until the arrival of Graham Nichols as managing director of Amadeus Gulf in 2012, the company lacked an adequate business intelligence (BI) system to enable instant analysis of its sales transactions with its customers. They were using static monthly reports in multiple Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that were difficult to manipulate, integrate and interpret given the ever-expanding nature of the business.
For example, while Amadeus Gulf could run reports on its top 10 travel agencies by volume, it was much more difficult to analyze profitability or to see trends in customer sales performance over time. The previous system using Excel was time consuming to manage and integrate and the information was often out of date by the time it was circulated to management.
Nichols says: “We also needed to capture key performance indicators relating to our marketplace. The Gulf market is a key strategic priority for Amadeus. We take pride in our long-term approach and are confident that our human and financial investment in technology will benefit the overall travel industry in our region.”
QlikView offers Amadeus Gulf a near real-time analytical solution
In a previous role, Nichols had experienced the benefits of the QlikView business discovery platform and its enterprise-class analytics and search, which has the simplicity and ease of office productivity software. The associative in-memory technology pioneered by QlikTech produces calculations in real-time—precisely what Amadeus Gulf needed to improve account management, enhance customer service, and assist with strategic planning. QlikView can be accessed via a laptop or mobile device as well as from the desktop.
Nichols, who has a systems background, developed the initial BI application himself knowing the requirements of the business and the capabilities of Qlikview. Then he approached QlikTechPartner ALMazroui& Partners (MAP) in the UAE with a view to not only validate the application he had developed but also to have MAP advise on the data model as necessary. He wanted to incorporate QlikView’s standards and best practices and optimize it leveraging MAP’s expertise in the product as well as add additional functionality. MAP specialists also incorporated the budget and finance logic into it and provided the user interface with excellent visualizations. Additionally, MAP developed many useful reports such as profit and loss, trial balance, and comparative analysis.
Sales Manager, MAP says: “Amadeus didn’t have visibility of the profitability of its top 10 accounts and needed key performance indicator metrics—for example, project revenue trends over the annual Gulf vacation season. The company also wanted to run ‘what if’ analysis to help with its business planning as well as get a better view of profitability throughout the region.”
Amadeus Gulf saves around 1 person with QlikView
Initially, Amadeus Gulf deployed QlikView for analysis of its sales and marketing data. Now, the dashboards also include profit and loss analysis. Nichols says: “Amadeus Gulf can now see, in near real-time, profit and loss analysis by customer and country instead of waiting for out-of-date monthly reports. MAP have been skilled and responsive in helping us to realize our vision and an excellent partner to work with.”
What used to take up to four hours to produce and analyze now takes just a few minutes and saves us around 1 person per month overall. However, the real value is that management can focus on higher value work using their time to actually delve into the dynamics of their business performance. Nichols adds: “We can easily make comparisons between time periods—for example, current to previous year or month to month. QlikView is intuitive and easy to use. We’ve loaded historical data from 2012 onwards and have now incorporated daily data which adds tremendous value to our application as we can spot trends immediately and take action accordingly.”
Amadeus Gulf has also extended the use of QlikView to mobile devices, including iPad devices, to make it easier for executive managers to get an overview of the business. MAP has assisted with training sessions for users and specialist advice for the Amadeus Gulf IT team.
“QlikView is intuitive and easy to use. We’ve loaded historical data from 2012 onwards and we now have daily data which adds tremendous value to our application as we can spot trends immediately and take action accordingly”
Graham Nichols, Managing Director, Amadeus Gulf
Al Mazroui & Partners will be joining the 11th CFO Strategies Forum MENA on November 15 and 15. To view the full case study please click here.
