Success Story - WASGAU Butchery

The customer

As a group-owned butcher shop, WASGAU Metzgerei GmbH supplies meat, sausage and ham specialties to over 70 fresh produce markets, six cash-and-carry markets of Wasgau Production & Handels AG and independent retailers in Saarland and Rheinland-Pfalz. The butcher shop processes around 750 tons of meat every year at the Pirmasens production site. In addition, 3,150 tons of in-house products and 235 tons of salads are produced per year. Only carefully tested raw materials from long-standing partners and regional farmers are used, which meet strict standards for meat origin and animal rearing.

With a total of over 700 employees and an annual turnover of over 80 million euros, WASGAU Metzgerei GmbH is the largest private label supplier to the WASGAU fresh markets.

Since 1967, the company-owned butcher shop of the Pirmasens-based food trading company Wasgau has been producing meat, sausage and ham specialties. But it's not just the butcher's trade that has a tradition, but also data-driven corporate management: WASGAU has been using business intelligence technology from Qlik across the group since 2008 to generate and visualize control-relevant key figures and analyzes from various IT systems.

Analysis of CSB Data with Qlik

The heart of the IT landscape at WASGAU Metzgerei is the ERP solution CSB. The data transfer from the industry solution to Qlik was previously carried out by exporting .csv files. “The disadvantage of such .csv exports is, on the one hand, the time required,” says Pascal Rottinger, Division Manager/Authorized Signatory at WASGAU Metzgerei GmbH. “On the other hand, errors can occur if, for example, data in the ERP system is subsequently changed.”

Fast implementation 

The implementation took just a few days due to the automated coding process and the existing solution templates.

The data is loaded incrementally twice a day from the CSB data warehouse via a tested interface. A role concept regulates data access.

In Qlik, among other things, sales, sales and wholesale margin are evaluated at different levels of detail and in different temporal dimensions such as current week, previous week, previous month, current year and previous year. In addition, the development of the key figures over different time periods is visualized in Qlik.

The applications are used by management, operations and production management as well as by the purchasing and scheduling departments.

Further development for CSB Production module 

Due to the good experiences with the iVIEW for CSB modules for sales and procurement, WASGAU Metzgerei also wanted to optimize the Qlik analysis of CSB data from the production area in another project. Without further ado, Informatec and WASGAU Metzgerei decided to work together and develop a corresponding module that will complement the iVIEW solution portfolio in the future.

“The collaboration is going very well,” says Pascal Rottinger. “As a CSB partner and Qlik Elite Channel Partner, Informatec brings with it the appropriate understanding of technology and the direct line to the software manufacturers. I have been working with both solutions for several years and, as a trained master butcher, I know the processes and the resulting requirements very well, not only from a controlling perspective, but also from a specialist department perspective.” In addition to the high level of technological expertise, Pascal Rottinger values ​​Informatec’s specific IT security know-how . “In the area of ​​security rules and authorization management, we benefit greatly from Informatec’s expertise, ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data and minimizing the risk of unauthorized access or data leaks.”

The aim is to use the new iVIEW for CSB module to get a current overview of which department was how productive, how much scrap was generated in which department and where there were deviations from the target values ​​of the individual items in the parts list such as weight, number or Quantity of raw materials or consumables and other relevant details. “We want to gain valuable information from this information in order to further improve our production,” explains Pascal Rottinger. “On the one hand, this involves efficiency aspects such as optimizing the production quantity, the use of goods, reducing the production frequency and the effective deployment of personnel. On the other hand, we attach particular importance to sustainability: We want to minimize food waste in our area of ​​responsibility and thus contribute to curbing food waste.”

TRANSPARENCY, EFFICIENCY AND DATA QUALITY

By using the iVIEW for CSB modules, the butcher shop benefits from efficient data provision and higher data quality in terms of integrity, timeliness and consistency of the CSB data. “Due to the automated ETL process, we can now be sure that we are working with reliable and trustworthy data directly from CSB,” confirms Pascal Rottinger. “We can also flexibly determine the frequency of data updates – right up to real-time evaluations. In the production area, for example, we will update the data every hour.”

The central definition and storage of master key figures in iVIEW Library also optimizes the reliability and precision of reports and analyses. “It is ensured that the key figures such as sales, delivery quota, wholesale margin and gross profit are always defined the same in all streams,” says Pascal Rottinger. “In addition, new reports and analyzes can be created more easily because there is no longer any effort required to define and maintain the key figures. The same applies to changes. They are done centrally in one place, which is much more efficient.”

The iVIEW Library was so well received by the company that WASGAU Metzgerei licensed it for its own existing projects.

Also for the group-wide process, which has not yet been completed in all areas of the company Migrating from QlikView to Qlik Sense using iVIEW Library is an option to ensure data consistency and reduce workload.

The decision to use iVIEW as a standard solution also means independence for WASGAU Metzgerei, as it does not depend on the specific know-how of an individual. Because Informatec ensures regular updates and maintenance, the company benefits from new features and security patches without the need for internal effort. In addition, the framework is continuously adapted to new technologies and industry standards to ensure future security.