The Challenge
The Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) is one of the world’s leading grains research organisations, responsible for planning, overseeing and investing in research and development for the Australian grains industry. The organisation had to enhance its existing underperforming reporting and business intelligence system to improve operational efficiencies.
The Solution
Founded in 1990, the Canberra based statutory authority forms part of the Department of Agriculture. Its primary objective is to drive the discovery, development and delivery of world-class innovation that enhances the productivity, profitability and sustainability of Australian grain growers.
GRDC approached Datacom to help it overhaul its business intelligence system. Our team’s understanding of the GRDC’s organisational needs meant we recommended the QlikView suite of products. The QlikTech commercial business intelligence (BI) platform delivers a user-driven, fast and easy to use suite that focuses on an in-memory data store that refreshes data in real time to support operational BI environments.
The suite is suitable for both IT professionals and non-technical users and helps people make decisions based on multiple sources of insight: data, people, and the environment. Users can also create and share knowledge and analysis in groups and across organisations.
Working closely with GRDC, Datacom demonstrated the solution’s systemic improvements to the organisation’s current operating environment. It vastly reduced reporting effort, improved productivity and access to information and enabled the customer to increase their understanding of their business so that they then could run it themselves.
Additionally, after the first week of engagement the desired results had been achieved well within the anticipated two-month timeframe – for 30% less than the initial budget outline.
“The Grain Research and Development Corporation have a fundamental requirement to regularly report on activities to grain growers and broader industry. GRDC’s direst stakeholders are broad and include Australian grain growers, the Board, researchers, Government, scientists, academic institutions and internal personnel. This depth of reporting was becoming both time consuming and a stretch on our current resources and we realised it was time we needed to look at ways to improve our overall processes, and with this in mind we approached Datacom.”
Jan Edwards - Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation spokesperson