Success Story - Liftstar Group

Challenge: Governance for KPIs and Master Items

While researching a solution for the centralized management of KPIs, variables, and Master Items in Qlik, Dominik Schmidt came across the iVIEW Library from Informatec. “I started looking because the existing solution had not been updated for several years and was beginning to show signs of failure. At some point, I came across iVIEW online,” he recalls.

The iVIEW Library is a web-based application and part of Informatec’s iVIEW Data Automation Framework. The Qlik-integrated framework combines various tools for data management, automation, and governance; within it, the Library handles the centralized management and provision of KPIs, dimensions, variables, descriptions, and other definitions for Qlik. As a “single point of truth,” it makes it possible to define content once, distribute it selectively across multiple Qlik applications, and synchronize changes centrally. It also supports search, versioning, governance, and dependency management. The solution is available for both Qlik Sense and Qlik Cloud.

Learn More About iVIEW Library

After the initial contact, Informatec presented the iVIEW Library in an online meeting. An Informatec developer then set up a test environment together with Liftstar. Following the successful test phase, Liftstar started with a standard package for five iVIEW users and an introductory workshop in which the basic concept for the existing KPI management setup was developed. The BI team quickly understood how the solution worked, used it independently for much of the implementation, and clarified questions or issues directly with the development team. Even during testing, it became clear that iVIEW could not only replace the previous approach, but also provide a more flexible and controlled solution.

Due to staffing constraints, Liftstar had to pause the project temporarily. When the team resumed the initiative, Informatec first presented the latest, further-developed version of iVIEW. The project then quickly regained momentum. The functional fit had already been confirmed during the test phase; the next step was to transfer the existing setup into iVIEW for production use and jointly implement the remaining requirements. The direct collaboration with Informatec was particularly impressive. Liftstar clarified questions and bug reports directly with the developers, without having to go through a ticketing system. This allowed both sides to assess requirements quickly and develop them further together.

As a trained software developer and system architect, Schmidt particularly appreciated that requirements were not only recorded, but also assessed from a technical perspective and explained transparently: “Nothing was over-discussed. The follow-up questions immediately had substance. You had the sense right away that our problem had been understood, that the most efficient approach had been thought through, and that they also explained how the system works in the background and where our requirements could be implemented.”

Customer-Specific Enhancements

One of the first customization requirements concerned the extensive additional information that Liftstar had maintained for its KPIs in its previous Excel-based management system. In addition to the standard attributes, it needed to be possible to store further characteristics, flags, sorting information, and business-related classifications. Informatec therefore added 20 freely configurable fields to the iVIEW Library.

This functionality was not implemented as a custom solution, but incorporated into the standard product and is therefore available to all iVIEW users. “Informatec said: This could also be useful for other customers, so we’ll add it to the product. Without a lot of discussion, the enhancement was simply made available,” Schmidt explains. Liftstar can now populate the additional fields flexibly and use them to structure, filter, and manage KPIs.

The second enhancement was based on a specific Liftstar requirement and was particularly important for the production rollout: stable referencing using user-defined IDs. In Qlik, every Master Item has a technical ID. Liftstar’s previous solution allowed the same higher-level ID to be used across multiple apps. This ensured that references remained stable even if a KPI was renamed or a sheet was copied between Qlik applications.

Initially, the iVIEW Library used names for referencing. If, for example, the KPI “Number of Orders” was renamed to “Net Number of Orders,” the existing assignment could be lost and the element could be created again as an additional item. Liftstar therefore asked Informatec for a custom enhancement that would replicate the ID logic of the previous system in iVIEW. An initial version was available after around two weeks, and a fully functional solution was ready after four weeks. “This gave us exactly the flexibility we needed to manage our KPI system,” Schmidt explains. This enhancement, which was initially tailored to Liftstar’s specific requirements, was subsequently also incorporated into the iVIEW standard.

The benefit is particularly evident when reusing entire sheets. Because the referenced KPIs have the same IDs across different apps, sheets can be transferred without breaking links to Master Items. At the same time, labels can be changed without losing the technical identity of the element. In this way, iVIEW combines centralized governance with the flexibility the BI team needs to further develop its Qlik applications. 

“iVIEW takes the management of KPIs, variables, and the relevant Master Items in Qlik to the next level — both in terms of manageability and governance.”

Dominik Schmidt, Head of Business Intelligence, Liftstar