Solution overview

Flipkart
Flipkartfounded in 2007 in
Bangalore, Indiais the
largest B2B e-commerce
platform in the country.
Having started with books, it
has now diversified into a
wide range of products.
Industry: Consumer
Products
Function: Finance, IT,
Marketing, Operations, Sales,
Supply Chain
Geography: India
Challenges:
Integrate complex data from
disparate sources
Deliver analytical data to
staff in various departments
Improve inventory utilization
Solution:
Flipkart has deployed
QlikView 11 to 200 users,
together with 35 named
users, and implemented
several applications analyzing
25 million rows of data.
Benefits:
Provided transparent and
up-to-date information for
analysis
Embedded data-driven
decision making at Flipkart
Improved inventory
utilization
Delivered first application for
sales in just six weeks
Data source systems
Applications: Open Source
ERP software
Database: Microsoft Excel,
MySQL



FLIPKART IMPROVES INVENTORY
UTILIZATION WITH QLIKVIEW
QlikView is a superb tool for managing inventory by allowing you to
optimize stock levels and lower costs associated with excess stock. By
using QlikView in our day-to-day operations, weve improved inventory
utilization by 5 percent.

Pravin Shinde, Analytics Manager, Flipkart

Flipkart, the largest B2B e-commerce
business in India, went live in 2007
with the objective of making books
easily available to anyone with
internet access. Founded by
entrepreneurs Sachin Bansal and
Binny Bansal, Flipkart has diversified
from book sales into other products.
It sells entertainment productsfrom
movies, music to consumer
electronicsas well as healthcare
and personal products, home
appliances, and clothing.

Flipkart experiences massive
growth quarter on quarter
The rapid diversification has also
brought rapid growth. This is
illustrated by the companys
expanding network of warehouses
and procurement operations.

This kind of scale has added to the
need for Flipkart to continually
upgrade its business discovery
software to better serve multiple
business units with new applications.

As a startup, Flipkart initially used
open source technology to support
the launch, but soon found that open
source business intelligence (BI)
tools had limited functionality. Shinde
says: Scalability was a problem. It
was hard to drill down into our data
to produce complex reports.

QlikView impresses Flipkart as
replacement for open source BI
In August 2011, the company
invested in its first licensed
business discovery software with
QlikView Enterprise Edition, which
has since been upgraded to
QlikView 11. By then, Flipkart was
experiencing an increasingly
complex data flow from different
business unitsfor example,
inventory and supply chain.

Shinde says: We needed a smart
system to collate and display
meaningful and actionable analysis
for decision makers across different
business units and locations. Prior
to this, wed very much been an
open source house. But with
exponential expansion in the
business and a growing number of
knowledge workers and managers
requiring BI analysis and reports,
we needed flexibility and speed in
our analytics system.

Flipkart was impressed by the rapid
time to business value achieved
with QlikView. Shinde says: The
first application for sales took just
six weeks to implement and each
subsequent functional area
supply chain, inventory and
financetook a similar effort.
Speed of delivery made all the
difference to our business, with
analysis available instantly at the
fingertips of our knowledge workers
on a self-service basis.

Another high-performing
application in QlikView is for
inventory management. Sales
people and managers access data
and find information quickly without
any IT support.

Shinde says: Previously, we were

RETURN ON
INVESTMENT
Inventory utilization
improvement



TIME TO VALUE
First application for
sales takes just six
weeks







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With QlikView, we are trying to establish data-driven decision making as a
culture within our organization. All the relevant teams have been empowered
and no longer depend on anyone else for reports and analysis.

Pravin Shinde, Analytics Manager, Flipkart
using ad hoc processes and
reporting. QlikView is a superb tool
for managing inventory by allowing
you to optimize stock levels and
lower costs associated with excess
stock. By using QlikView in our
day-to-day operations, weve
improved inventory utilization by 5
percent.

Using its 12-strong in-house IT
team, Flipkart has deployed
QlikView 11 to 200 users, together
with 35 named users, without
requiring help from external
consultants. The QlikView
applications analyze around 25
million rows of data, which is
increasing in line with the
companys growth.

With direct access to company
data, staff can spend more time on
analysis rather than data collation,
and work with one version of the
truth.

Flipkart transforms its business
culture
In an industry where fast access to
information is important, QlikView
has also transformed the way
Flipkart does business. Its helping
to make the company more agile
and responsive to its customers.
With QlikView, we are trying to
establish data-driven decision
making as a culture within our
organization, says Shinde. Were
changing the way we see
ourselves. All the relevant teams
have been empowered and no
longer depend on anyone else for
reports and analysis. Weve
developed the capacity to share
knowledge holistically across
teams, which means we can better
evaluate our sales strategy.

The teams have responded well to
QlikView due to its intuitive nature
and user-friendly dashboards.
Users can explore information
freely rather than follow predefined
paths of questions.

The QlikView business discovery
platforms application-driven model
works with existing data sources,
which for Flipkart includes the open
source MySQL data management
system and Microsoft Excel
spreadsheet software.

According to Shinde, the company
plans to extend QlikView use to
employee tablets and
smartphoneswhich is now
possible with QlikView 11and
provide a dashboard for senior
management to gain an overview
of company performance.