Comfort
Comfort consists of independent companies and fully owned subsidiaries and is a nationwide, multidisciplinary operator in plumbing, ventilation, electricity and cooling. They offer complete solutions from materials and installation to service and maintenance. Sales are both B2B and B2C. The group comprises about a hundred legal entities of varying sizes.
From “gut feeling” to evidence-based decisions
I'm generalising now, but trade businesses in general still act too much on “gut feeling” rather than on facts about how the business is doing.
This realisation and the desire to make data-driven decisions led Comfort to initiate an internal project a little over a year ago called "Fact-based approach".
The project "Fact-based approach" had two main components.. Firstly, to gain facts and knowledge about the member company's activities, and secondly, to increase the financial competence and understanding of finance in the member companies. With this in mind, they started to explore the market for a partner who could help implement a BI platform. The companies selected were Fellowmind and Power BI.
”We started on a small scale and created a pilot group of five companies that worked with Fellowmind to design the framework for the BI platform. One success factor was that Fellowmind was able to appoint a consultant to the project with a controller background who could also build the reports," says Hans Spett.
Separate databases - but shared reports and insights
In addition to the five pilot companies, a further twenty member companies have started using the BI platform. Although in many respects the members work closely together, they are still different legal entities with different ownership constellations and they need to be treated accordingly, Fellowmind's framework for solutioning takes this into account..
“Our talented architects have built a solution where all member companies are in one and the same solution, despite having completely different databases. It makes the on-boarding of new members very efficient," says Fellowmind BI developer Liliya Karamatova.
Our talented architects have built a solution where all member companies are in one and the same solution, despite having completely different databases.
Despite separate databases, you can still benefit from the whole network’s data.
“A really great feature is that each member company can also see the whole network’s average for different KPIs. It adds a whole other dimension to the analysis when you get the network's average to compare yourself with. Someone might discover that the billing rate for installers is 10 percentage points lower than for other Comfort companies. Then you can start to identify why this is the case and start outlining measures. It will also be easy for those of us working centrally to find and highlight various good examples within the network that can inspire other members to improve and streamline their operations," says Hans Spett.
Incentives to harmonise working methods in the financial system
- A major bonus effect that we have seen as a result of the chain-wide reports is that for the first time we have incentives and understanding among member companies to harmonise how they work in the financial system. If you do not fill in the information in the financial system, you will not get any results in the report. We have been trying to harmonise the way we work for a number of years, but it is only now that the penny has dropped,’ continues Hans Spett.
Although the project has already generated a lot of insights, much of the work remains to be done.
“We are working on two fronts. Firstly, by getting more members on board, and secondly, by continuing to develop the platform to include more and even better reports," concludes Mr Spett.
