The Perret Group is a distributor of agricultural products (fertilizers, tools, plant protection products, etc.) for both consumers and professionals. With a presence throughout the Southeast, the company has six subsidiaries.To improve the management of its overall operations and foster collaboration among its subsidiaries, the Perret Group decided to overhaul its information system and organize it around business lines. As part of this initiative, the company implemented a business intelligence tool.
A look back at the rollout of this project, featuring an interview with François Baud, Head of Business Information Systems at the Perret Group.
Why did you launch this dashboarding project?
“The Perret Group currently employs 350 people, spread across our six subsidiaries in the southeastern quarter of France. To coordinate and manage the Group’s operations , we constantly need to generate metrics and dashboards related to revenue, margins, logistics, and inventory management. Previously, each subsidiary generated its own statistics using Excel, based on its own criteria and interpretation. This data was then used by management to support decision-making and steer the business.”
As part of our information system overhaul, we decided to implement a dashboard tool. This had become essential for optimizing the management of our business. “In addition, we set up a business-oriented data center, and we wanted to reap the full benefits of it by implementing a dashboard solution.”
What was your approach?
“We issued a request for proposals and shortlisted four solutions that met our needs. We ultimately chose DigDash. Their responsiveness and the ease of use of their solution were clearly the deciding factors in our decision.”
In addition, the DigDash teams are very responsive. To set up statistics for our various subsidiaries, we needed to deploy their mapping module. And it was all done very quickly. As a result, we receive data that’s already been compared, sorted, and put into context. All we have to do is focus on decision-making. For example, we can get a real-time view of inventory levels for each branch; the metrics are highlighted on the map, and we can easily analyze these results.”
What benefits have been observed so far?
“We’re seeing a significant time savings. In fact, it used to take several days to create and populate our reports and dashboards in Excel and PowerPoint. Now, with just one click, everything is ready. The DigDash tool makes it very easy to create PowerPoint presentations in the company’s branding and with the necessary data in just a few minutes.
In addition, we’re improving our reliability. Because all the statistics from the various subsidiaries are consolidated using the same criteria and formats, this requires us to use common metrics. As a result, the dashboards we generate are more reliable and meaningful. We pool all the data from the various subsidiaries, which we can cross-reference or use separately. Finally, we receive all the data on D+1, which allows us to analyze the data in real time and ensure the greatest possible accuracy.
“For now, the tool is fully operational for subsidiary managers. We may expand its use to other managers in the near future…”