Data consolidation across Litex Industries enables strategic decision-making

Texas home goods manufacturer find hidden costs and opportunities with the power of data.

The company has thousands of products from dozens of vendors, so data analytics offers a window into commonly recurring hidden costs and opportunities within the business. Litex Chief Information Officer Ken Lauder leans on Phocas BI software to put data at the fingertips of decision makers to help them answer critical business questions related to these costs and opportunities.

“We use Phocas across our three divisions, and one of the most popular Phocas matrices for our Craftmade division is our 52-weeks rolling sales table,” said Lauder.

“Our users love having the information month over month, year over year, quickly and easily tracking the sales for the main products for the division.”

With a few clicks, users can easily review current sales, and then sort the data to focus on highest sales volume for quick sales analysis.

“Phocas makes it easy to find the hidden data to help us better understand, for example, why products may be trending down in sales, or to address underperforming vendors and sales reps,” added Lauder.

The data may indicate, for example, that a vendor is not hitting its on time, in full goals, forcing Litex to phase out certain products, discontinue working with the vendor, or focus on other products and vendors that can provide more consistent products and deliveries.

Like its large inventory and list of suppliers, Litex has many third-party sales reps that work outside the company. Phocas allows Litex to track sales and easily identify which reps are trending up or down. Sorting through the data quickly identifies gaps that can be addressed, new reps that may need additional training, and/or underperforming partners that might need extra attention.

From the 52-week table, Lauder can also monitor primary warehouse and vendor purchases and highlight sales trends. Product managers and senior leadership can leverage the data to start discussions with vendors that help them understand how they can improve to ensure Litex continues to stock their products.

Lauder and his team also regularly review the top 10 customers with returns to better understand the “why.” Did a customer purchase too much of custom item or were the products underperforming? Access to the big picture on returns can answer a variety of questions on quality and have an impact on future supply chain decisions, providing a launch point to identify real issues.

“Phocas makes it easy to quickly review how our products and partners are performing so that we can make decisions to best manage our business,” said Lauder. “We want to empower our decision makers to dig into the details to find ways to reduce costs, and perhaps more importantly, find opportunities to improve.”