CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
Old Fashioned Foods Builds
for Future with iQ4bis
Old Fashioned Foods Group is anything
but old-fashioned. Their implementation
of iQ4bis has given decision-makers a
real-time view of key metrics within the
company and helps them react quickly to
changes in the marketplace. Additionally,
by adding iQ4bis as the access portal to
their extensive database resources, Old
Fashioned Foods has been able to signifi-
cantly extend the life of their legacy ERP
systems and avoid costly re-engineering.
Old Fashioned foods is an iconic New
Zealand food production company known
for it’s ‘Aunt Betty’s Pudding’. With close
to 90% share of the NZ steamed puddings
market and a significant and growing
export market, Old Fashioned Foods
is experiencing rapid growth through
expanded sales. But the key driver behind
their adoption of iQ4bis as the front end BI
tool for executives within Old Fashioned
Foods was their acquisition of Hansells,
another leading food manufacturer with
familiar household names.
“When we acquired Hansells we found
we had two parallel supply chain and
financial systems,” says Mary Lumgair,
Microsoft Dynamics – AX Project Manager
at Old Fashioned Foods (OFF). “Plus we
were setting up a third facility in Australia
and had to get a system up and running
there. Hansells in Masterton was running
an IBM mainframe-based System 21 /
GEAC ERP solution while our factory in
New Lynn operated a highly customised
PCS MRP interfaced with Sybiz financial
package. Our task was to be able to
integrate the data from both systems so
that we could use it more effectively while
maintaining the investments that we’d
made into the data capture and storage
systems we had in place.”
“Our first step was to standardise on
Microsoft SQL Server as our data ware-
house and Microsoft Dynamics – AX as
our ERP platform,” continues Lumgair.
“That allowed us to bring some order to
our backend databases. But we were still
in the same situation in that we needed
an easy-to-use front end that would give
management a daily snapshot of the
business for enhanced decision-making,
give analysts key metrics for strategic
planning and give the production, sales
and marketing team enough information
to manage their day-today activities.”
“We knew what we wanted,” says
Lumgair, “but was there the solution that
would fulfil our needs? We looked briefly
at TargIT but the data models and report-
ing capabilities were not flexible enough
to fully satisfy our requirements. Then we
BUSINESS CHALLENGES
• Two discrete legacy ERP solutions nearing
end of functional life
• Parallel systems meant data from one
group couldn’t easily be compared with
data from the other
• OLAP and Pivot-based reporting was slow
and cumbersome
• Difficulty in accessing and analysing key
metrics including sales and inventory
statistics
• Lack of comprehensive, up-to-date view
across regions, brands and teams
REASONS FOR SELECTING iQ4bis
• Extremely favourable feedback from
iQ4bis users in similar vertical markets
• Ability to deliver everything on the Old
Fashioned Foods ‘wish list’
• Tight interface with legacy systems and
Microsoft Dynamics – AX
• Ease-of-use and clean graphics appealed
to upper-level management
• Pricing structure well within Old Fash-
ioned Foods budget
BUSINESS BENEFITS
• Saved tens of thousands of dollars and
countless man-hours by extending func-
tional life of legacy ERP investments
• Empowers upper level management to
respond to market dynamics immediately
and to avoid costly delays through ‘self-
service’ near real-time reporting
• Increased efficiencies provided by tighter
management of sales and margins pro-
vides
• More cost-effective allocation of resourc-
es from holistic view of company across
all regions, brands and teams
 heard about iQ4bis from HP, one of our
WHO USES iQ4bis WITHIN OLD IT partners.”
FASHIONED FOODS GROUP “We talked to a few other Microsoft
Dynamics – AX / iQ4bis installations like
• Upper level management including
Managing Director and CFO Frucor and Bell Tea,” says Lumgair, “and
the more we heard the better it sounded.
• Sales manager; operations manager iQ4bis could address everything on
• Territory managers our wish list and, from all reports, was
flexible, easy-to-use and the pricing was
• Marketing team
well within our budget. Our only concern
was it sounded too good to be true.”
DEMONSTRATED ABILITY
What convinced Old Fashioned Foods
that iQ4bis could deliver was the
“iQ4bis provides the in- demonstration. “Mary and the manage-
ment team at OFF were very specific in
formation reporting that
what they wanted to see,” says Sunesh
we need. We could see Samarasinghe, General Manager of
the value of improving the iQ4bis - APAC, “so that made our job
access to up-to-date infor- so much easier. We showed them how
easy it was to pull information out of the
mation across the whole data warehouse, how they could create
business and made the their own personal views, how easy it
decision quickly to engage was to make queries and how easy it
was to create and share reports. That’s
with iQ4bis. We have not what they asked for and that’s what we
regretted the decision.” showed.”
“iQ4bis provides the information report-
Ross MacKenzie,
CEO of Old Fashioned ing that we need,” says Ross MacKenzie,
CEO of Old Fashioned Foods Group. “We
Foods Group
could see the value of improving the
access to up-to-date information across
the whole business and made the deci-
sion quickly to engage with iQ4bis. We
have not regretted the decision.”
Implementing iQ4bis went very well.
“Their data was quite clean,” says Manu
“Being able to track sales
Ikkala, Senior Consultant at iQ4bis,
performance by month, “which made the entire process go
year-to-date, region, extremely well. There were a few null
category and sales person fields in some of the data sets, but
one of the benefits of iQ4bis is that it
across our entire organisa- highlights these issues and allows the
tion has been a tremendous database people to enhance the ac-
benefit for us.” curacy and completeness of the data.
They had already started to build cubes
Thys Van Lingen, for analysis so we even had a head start
Sales & Marketing Manager at when setting up the templates.”
Old Fashioned Foods Group Manu and the team from iQ4bis have
been very helpful at all stages of
implementation,” says Lumgair. “In
essence, they completed the first cube
Copyright © 2008, iQ4bis, Inc. All Rights Reserved. iQ4bis, – for sales – to get us started. Then they
the iQ4bis logo, and the designated trademarks herein are worked alongside us and we built the
trademarks of iQ4bis, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All second cube together, giving us valuable
other brands or product names are the trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective holders. Part Nbr: CS_EN_001 skills as we take on more development
USA AUSTRALIA
responsibilities. We’re in the process of
evaluating which additional cubes we’ll
need and fully expect to be able to build
them with minimal input from the iQ4bis
team.”
BENEFITS REALISED
Already the iQ4bis solution has paid
benefits. “By implementing iQ4bis we
have been able to extend the life of our
current legacy systems and continue to
leverage all of the database procedures
that have been refined over the years,”
says Lumgair. “This means that we
can focus on moving forward on new
initiatives rather than having to re-invent
what we’ve already developed.”
Old Fashioned Foods’ sales management
is now much more efficient with iQ4bis.
“Being able to track sales performance
by month, year-to-date, region, category
and sales person across our entire or-
ganisation has been a tremendous bene-
fit for us,” says Thys Van Lingen, Sales &
Marketing Manager at OFF. “With iQ4bis,
I can measure performance against quo-
tas and make adjustments as necessary.
We can email reports to the sales team
and the territory managers use iQ4bis
to help them track our sales incentive
initiatives.”
“Before iQ4bis,” continues Van Lingen,
“we had to use a combination of pivot
and OLAP reports that were generated
on a monthly or weekly basis. While
the information was comprehensive, it
was difficult to compare and contrast
the numbers. Now, we can see the key
metrics on one screen in near real-time.
Margin analysis is now much easier
for Thys. “iQ4bis helps us plan how we
structure our margins,” he says. “With
iQ4bis, I can drill down into the numbers
and get a much better perspective on
performance. This enables me to make
more informed decisions and identify
any patterns that might affect future
sales.”
Old Fashioned Foods is continuously
enhancing its iQ4bis capabilities. “Our
next project is inventory,” concludes Van
Lingen. “The more information we have,
the better we can manage our business.
iQ4bis has provided us with the tools
to access the right data when we need
it and then make better decisions as a
result.”
EUROPE NEW ZEALAND
Phone: +64 (9) 529 3767
Email: sales@iq4bis.com
www.iQ4bis.com