Background

Technidrive Solutions, based in Ireland, is a dedicated Industrial Drives supplier offering a service which can be as simple as identifying and supplying replacement drive components such as Electric Motors, Reduction Gear units, Electronic Motor Controllers and Power Transmission equipment, or assisting in the design, selection and subsequent supply of complete new drives from prime movers to dedicated turnkey control systems. Technidrive supply international manufacturers and OEMs of industrial machinery.  

Before Introducing a Power BI Solution 

All orders were handled through their accountancy package Sage and excel spreadsheets, however, visibility was poor and it required a lot of manual communication. The primary issue was this limited visibility. Working from spreadsheets that needed manually updated meant that it wasn’t easy to see when an order was due to be shipped, the order status, who was looking after it and if it had been sent. Sometimes an order delivery date came and went, and nothing was flagged up as a late delivery as the office employees were relying on delivery notes coming back from the warehouse.  

The Solution

Allsop developed a solution using Power BI to visually display information relating to Technidrive orders. The Power BI dashboard is connected directly to a Sage database and refreshed every 5 minutes using Power Automate and Power BI Premium capabilities. This allows employees to see data that is current but also data that can change quickly. The dashboard shows at a quick glance the status of current orders and allows employees to work off this screen, while the report shows the more detailed information relating to orders.

Employees across the business are using it as it is an online solution, from salespeople to office staff and workshop employees. The solution is put on visible display on screens in the warehouse and main office. It is used every hour of every day to help update customers and orders. Technidrive’s order processing function uses it to check/update orders and update customers. Technidrive employees in the workshop use it to check when new orders are put on and when they are due which enables them to know what orders are more urgent than others.

Results

The solution has provided better visibility throughout the business which has allowed Technidrive to make customers aware if an order is going to be late or delayed. This early flagging of late orders has had a positive effect on customer relations. It has also had a very positive effect on internal communications and this is the main area that has been improved. As everyone is reading from the same script it has helped to bridge the gap between warehouse, production and office staff regarding who, when, where and what in terms of orders. The reliance on printing paper orders and physically leaving them to the workshop has been greatly reduced. All order information is visually there on a screen and updated every 5 minutes, this has helped to increase productivity and decrease the time taken to process orders. There has been a considerable time-saving from employees knowing the current status of orders and if they have been dispatched, as this can now be accessed by everyone online. This has also reduced the amount of verbal and face to face communication required which was a major benefit. This was especially beneficial during the Covid-19 pandemic as without this system it would have been more difficult to process orders as paper notes would have had to been passed between people and other such interactions. Employees in the workshop also have a better structure to their work as this is no longer reliance on one person to schedule work. Everybody in the workshop is able to see what they should be working on. To find out more about our Power BI Dashboards, check out our interactive demos here. Or drop us a message to arrange a call with our BI expert.