Providing flexible Qlik and Power BI training to support facilities management reporting

THE CHALLENGE

As a company grows and technology moves on, companies can find that they need to adapt their approach to data management and reporting. This was the case for a large company within the facilities management industry. They were already reporting retrospective management information to their senior teams, but after implementing a new Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP), they began to see the need for a self-service business intelligence solution.

The company bought Qlik licences that helped their internal teams to collate their own information and start to develop a new business intelligence strategy. However, they quickly realised that they needed more detailed training to create bespoke reports that suited the needs of their business, and this is when they approached Climber for training.

THE APPROACH

Having already worked with the company on their Qlik implementation, we understood their objectives and could quickly provide initial training to their internal team. We delivered an in-person ‘Introduction to Qlik’ session that ensured the team were confident and able to self-serve.

“The trainer came to us and showed our class of eight people how to write scripts and work in the front end of Qlik. I was really impressed; she was professional, kept at the right pace, and got the content over in an engaging way. That training really moved us along in a huge way.”

Business Information Manager

A great benefit of Qlik is that there are a huge range of extensions that help businesses get even more from their solution. Although the company already had NPrinting to help them customise their reports, they realised that they weren’t using it to its full potential.

When it became time to upgrade their servers, they saw another opportunity to refresh their training.

“We upgraded our Qlik environment with Climber with no issues and then arranged more training. Due to the pandemic this was via Microsoft Teams. The trainer clearly knew his stuff, and by that point we had scenarios and knew what we wanted to get from the training, which gave us solid examples. When you know what you want to get out of training it’s invaluable, and we were able to put into practice the techniques that Climber showed us straight away, which saved us around five working days per month in time.”

Business Information Manager

The company is part of a wider group that was using Microsoft Power BI, so the team wanted to see what they could get from it. A key benefit of coming to Climber for training is that we are experienced in both Qlik and Microsoft BI solutions, so we could easily adapt and deliver a training session on the basics of Power BI.

This helped the company to decide how they wanted to use it alongside Qlik. We’ve continued to provide ad-hoc training when required and were recently asked to deliver another Qlik session to discuss real scenarios the team were facing.

“It worked really well because we knew what we were asking. It was an ad-hoc session, so there was no fixed training material, but the trainer was super knowledgeable and interesting, and he was happy to go at the pace of the people involved.”

Business Information Manager

THE RESULT

Our training has helped the company to get the most from their BI solutions. We have a great relationship, and the fact that we’ve been able to provide training on both Qlik and Microsoft Power BI, has provided continuity.

By being flexible we have continued to meet the changing needs of the company as they have continued to grow, and all of the feedback we have received from employees has been extremely positive.