Sogec: managing customer relationships with our analytics portal and Qlik

Why data matters

As a provider of intangible services, Sogec must maintain close relationships with its customers and foster regular, effective communication.

In particular, the company keeps them informed about their use of its services and the results achieved, allowing them to adapt their strategy. To do so, it relies on smart use of its data and regular reporting, which until now was delivered through a dedicated external portal.

“A solution designed first and foremost for our customers to track their services and objectives, but also for our internal teams, to improve how we operate and how we support our customers,” explains Marie Torton, Reporting Manager at Sogec.

One portal for every business line

The project was split into several phases: Phase 1, an internal POC built around Qlik; Phase 2, the rollout of a new portal matching the previous one; and Phases 3 and 4, its evolution into a central, global customer portal bringing together all of the group’s activities.

“Ultimately, the goal is to offer a single point of entry for every business line, which is not the case today. Currently, the portal does not cover all of the group’s activity and mainly contains a section dedicated to discount coupons and rebate offers. Our ambition is to provide a single portal that brings together statistics on all of our business lines, along with cross-functional analysis,” explains Serge Imbott, CIO at Sogec.

Internally, such a portal will also pay off! It will allow teams to take data analysis further and offer more relevant, more comprehensive customer support.

Why a POC?

With this in mind, Sogec launched the first part of its project: the POC. “The idea here was to set up Qlik without sharing it with our customers at first, to give ourselves time to learn the tool and make sure it met our expectations,” explains Marie Torton.

This POC, a first version of the portal, had three objectives:

• Validate that Qlik meets the company’s business and technical expectations
• Make sure it is functionally powerful enough and easy enough to learn
• Make sure it integrates easily into Sogec’s information system.

From the outset, the approach was to train one person in-house, in this case Marie Torton, so that she would then be fully operational and autonomous in managing the portal. That goal was achieved during this first phase.

The predictive dimension

For its project, Sogec started by building a new tool designed to add a predictive dimension to some of its customers’ promotional campaigns. “With the portal, customers get a long-term view of their promotional activity. Until now, the old tool only let them see what had happened. By adding prediction, we wanted to help them better forecast their results over time and manage their budgets more effectively,” explains Marie Torton.

With Qlik, Sogec now enables each of its customers to analyze their past campaigns by various criteria and forecast budgets for similar future campaigns. This forecast is then regularly compared with actual performance against objectives, so each customer can see whether it is ahead or behind and whether it needs to strengthen or complement its strategy.

However, if a customer has no historical data to build its budgets, it can benefit from anonymized analyses carried out by Sogec on other customers to arrive at a reasonable budget. The group’s sales reps can also use these studies to better advise their customers and offer them personalized strategies.

Built step by step

Modern and customizable

Through this portal, Sogec clearly set out to give its customers a modern, comprehensive tool that is easy to use and customize. That is what Marie Torton is working to deliver through the portal’s configuration and management: “I offer customers several pages and visualizations with different variants in terms of appearance (color, shape…) and analysis (date…) so they can choose what suits them best. I approach every portal development this way: one element, several examples and several variations. That is real flexibility compared with our previous solution.” As a result, each customer has a portal tailored to it, which it can customize or use as is, depending on its needs. With Qlik, they also get a more user-friendly and pleasant tool.

Successful adoption

At every stage, Sogec’s portal was very well received. Internally, presentations and training sessions were held to drive adoption. “This kind of project can cause real upheaval internally. It was important for us to support the teams. And the response was unanimous: everyone saw the value of the solution,” says Serge Imbott.

The same goes for customers. The tool was recently rolled out to them, and “they have welcomed it and will soon see its benefits! ”

The start of a major project

And this is just the beginning! With this second phase complete, Sogec is already preparing what comes next. The next step is to bring every business line onto the portal so that it becomes the hub of the customer relationship.

Later on, other features and information will be added to the portal so that it serves as a showcase for Sogec. Its internal use, by the sales and logistics teams for example, will also be stepped up so that it becomes a fully fledged tool for the teams. “We really want to make this tool a single, centralized portal to strengthen our relationship with our customers,” confirms Serge Imbott.

Essential support

But none of this would have been possible without Synolia’s teams and, in particular, their business intelligence consulting. “Synolia is not just a service provider, it has become a true partner,” admits Serge Imbott. “The Synolia and Sogec teams complemented each other very well. This project was a success on every level: process, tool and people! We never felt any stress or pushback, despite some sometimes complex requests on our part. Synolia’s experts always remained open to discussion and found solutions to every one of our problems.”

Marie Torton agrees: “Synolia’s involvement during the POC was truly valuable. Today, I build on it to develop the portal. I appreciated the collaboration in terms of project management, responsiveness and professionalism. Deadlines and commitments were always met, everything delivered worked from the start and acceptance testing raised very few issues, so it is a success!”

Not to mention the satisfaction with the portal and Qlik: “What stands out for me is how easily I got to grips with the portal and how quickly I could use it on my own. I did not expect it to be so dynamic or so scalable. You have to use it to realize its scope and its ability to meet needs!”

Watch the video: the analytics portal by Synolia

to collect and share data with ease