Kramp: Thanks to company-wide visual analytics, an essential step towards digital transformation has been taken

Remko: “At first, it was just five early ambassadors participating in this endeavor. Very soon, we realized the limitations of what the five of us could do. If we wanted to succeed, we needed a plan to expand. So, together with the business owners in Finance and Technology, we developed a project plan. To carry it out, we had to reach out to the board members and get their approval. Eventually, the Executive Board approved our plan. We had to agree on specific BI governance, whereby each Board domain had to be self-sufficient to some extent and be able to claim some of the central BI team’s development capacity.”

Remko considered that introducing self-service was very important, since it would become a necessary step towards implementing visual analytics and consequently making that large amount of data accessible. And with that, they would be able to develop accurate and effective dashboards themselves, with which they could then create actionable insights. “For Ewoud and I, it was clear from the start that, to make the project a success, we needed to get the whole organization on board. We wanted to develop a company-wide data-driven mindset. With a decentralized approach to BI, strong involvement from all departments, and a lot of freedom for users to visualize their own data, we were able to establish the desired data-driven mindset.”

“Our philosophy at the start was to limit the number of Tableau licenses to about 30, distributed across all business departments. The point was to ensure that the licenses would be properly utilized. In the process, we also drafted a guideline for managers to determine whether someone was eligible for a license. The greatest freedom given to the business was to be able to connect with several often-unstructured data sources. This went straight against IT etiquette” says Remko. “Many companies tend to keep everything inaccessible. I still believe that making it available for everyone was the right thing to do. It helped speed up the development of insights and, at the same time, set up a robust data warehouse, which usually takes considerably more time. Later, however, we did have to centralize control somewhat further. That was Ewoud’s decision. The philosophy of local and decentralized management in charge of each department with the use of Tableau was maintained, but we introduced an overall management system to keep everything organized and under control.”

Remko: “In the fall of 2016, after we had laid the foundation for the data warehouse with Teradata, we settled upon a tool for data visualization. Representatives from all relevant departments were involved in the selection process, as we were looking for a tool that could fit every area as best as possible. We collectively opted for Tableau. The deciding factor was the fact that Tableau is set up very intuitively. There is also the fact that Tableau has a very large community of users in the market that is always sharing its experience for best practices.”

Ewoud: “In the first year, which was very hectic, Infotopics from Oldenzaal helped us with the foundation, the installation of the server, the access rights based on roles and groups, and many more related aspects. Then, we distributed the licenses, and the analysts were trained and assisted by Infotopics in creating the first dashboards. It became evident that this new tool would be adopted very quickly. Infotopics’ goal is to help their customers fully get into the swing of things, and Kramp’s goal back then was to achieve self-sufficiency. That is why our partnership with Infotopics worked so wonderfully. Now we are able to handle things ourselves in most areas, while Infotopics still jumps in and helps us with complex issues or when we need an extra pair of hands.”

Remko: “2020 was a very special year for Kramp. When the Coronavirus crisis hit, we devised scenarios and worked out how we would weather potential setbacks. In the end, the opposite turned out to be true: our sales actually increased substantially. However, it is important to point out that we immediately took adequate measures, both logistically and within the workspace. The logistics service was able to continue as usual and remote work was quickly implemented by means of applications such as Tableau. Moreover, the digital transformation we had already kick-started added more functionality to our E-Commerce platform. This also proved to be very beneficial. I think 2020 is proof that digital transformation is the right way to go.”
Ewoud: “Tableau was very helpful during the COVID-19 crisis as it allowed everyone to access all the important insights from their homes. That way they were always aware of what was going on.”