Case Study – Info Explorer Cubes

Case Study: How the team at Protect-A-Bed provides tailored information to their sales staff and report impressive time savings using Orchid’s Info Explorer and Process Scheduler tools.

In this case study you’ll see how the commission calculation went from an 8-10 hour process to a 45-minute process.

“The management, salespeople and administrative staff at Protect-A-Bed are all very happy with the benefits Info Explorer has given us. It was a real life-saver!”
Anneke Chamy, Chief Financial Officer
Protect-A-Bed

The Company

Protect-A-Bed® offers a complete line of protective bedding products. Having operated for more than 30 years and now selling in 45 countries, they are a worldwide leader in mattress protection innovation.

The Challenge

Anneke Chamy, CFO of Protect-A-Bed, needed to find a tool that would enable their salespeople, on a more real-time and pro-active basis, to analyze their customers’ history, predict future needs, and prepare for meetings.

They also needed to find a more efficient way of calculating commissions payable, as this was taking many hours of manual effort for each payment run.

The Solution

We recommended Protect-A-Bed use Orchid Systems’ Info Explorer product. Using Info Explorer in conjunction with Orchid’s Process Scheduler would enable the customer to automatically deliver refreshed reports to each salesperson on a regular basis, tailored to contain the exact data and information most important to them.

With Info Explorer, you can configure exactly which Sage 300 ERP screen you want to open as the result of a drill-down at the transaction level. When querying the screens, the end user is not taxing the SQL Server, because all of the data is contained locally within the cube. The customer found that to be very effective, as it doesn’t affect the day to day performance of the Sage 300 ERP system.

Using Info Explorer was also recommended to solve their commissions challenges, as it could access data directly from their Sage 300 database, and use this to calculate and report on commissions payable.

The Result

Anneke Chamy says all the staff at Protect-A-Bed are very happy with the benefits Info Explorer has given them. “It was a real life-saver.” Salespeople now rely heavily on the new tailored reporting. “We have created a little bit of a monster. If they don’t get their cube every week I get an email and a phone call to prompt me, because they want them!”

The team is also saving time and effort on the preparation of reports. Commission runs that used to take 8-10 hours now take about 45 minutes.

Learn more about Info Explorer cubes and other reporting solutions on our Reporting Page.