Jaeckle Distributors Uses Spotfire to Differentiate in a

Jaeckle Distributors Uses Spotfire to
Differentiate in a Commodity Market
How better information led to better business
JAECKLE
DISTRIBUTORS
Jaeckle Distributors is an
award-winning floor covering
and countertop distributor in
Madison, Wisconsin that has
been in business for more than
50 years. It has five locations
serving 10 states in the Midwest.
FAST FACTS
www.jaeckledistributors.com
Locations
5
Employees
115
Brands
40+
Founded
1958
For three generations, Jaeckle Distributors has provided flooring and countertops
to the Midwest. It credits its success to customer relationships and its ability
to exceed expectations for service and quality products. But, new trends in the
market were troubling. “Over the past decade the industry has moved towards
commoditization,” says Jeff Jaeckle, president. “There’s so little room for error
now that to make an acceptable profit, we’ve had to become much more efficient.”
CHALLENGE
Jaeckle needed to get smarter and find a way to differentiate from the
competition. “In the past, getting more than just basic information from our data,
honestly, could take hours,” says Jaeckle. “The lack of deep visibility meant that
we missed opportunities. We recognized the need for two things: a greater ability
to protect our margins and minimize costs via better decision-making and stickier
relationships with customers.”
SOLUTION
Jaeckle decided they could achieve their goals using business intelligence.
“When I first started reading about BI, it didn’t appear to be affordable for small
or middle-market companies. But that has changed,” says Jaeckle. “It is now
completely feasible for a company our size with the proper internal commitment.”
SUCCESS STORY | 2
“We are not a tech-heavy
company, in fact, our
whole industry is behind
the times. It’s one of the
reasons why we see a big
opportunity in getting
involved with a company
like TIBCO. It can give us a
competitive advantage.”
—Jeff Jaeckle, President,
Jaeckle Distributors
DETAIL
$400,000
PER YEAR
Predicted long-term impact on
Jaeckle Distributor’s profitability
The company hired a professional experienced in IT and analytics to manage their BI
efforts and help chose software. “We chose Spotfire for a couple of reasons,” says
Jaeckle. “One, we really like the visuals. But the main reason is, when we need to
make changes, we can use scripting instead of programming. We don’t have a lot of
IT resources with that capability, so that was really attractive.”
BENEFITS
BETTER DECISION-MAKING
Jaeckle’s St. Louis branch was underperforming and they thought they knew why,
but when the data was analyzed, Spotfire proved them wrong. “Not only was
our gut reaction wrong, but the St. Louis margin issue was exactly opposite of
what was originally thought. Before Spotfire, we would have focused on growing
the part of the business that is the problem rather than doing what solves the
problem,” says Jaeckle. “We could get that data without Spotfire, but the analysis
would’ve been so cumbersome that we never would have done it.”
HUGE TIME SAVINGS
With powerful analytics, employees no longer have to wait for information.
“Conservatively, Spotfire has saved 20 or more hours per week—at least $30,000
so far,” says Jaeckle.
BETTER CUSTOMER SERVICE
While Jaeckle was initially interested in analytics for improving internal operations, it
wasn’t long before the company saw how it could transform its customer experience.
“We see ways that it absolutely will help differentiate us in a commoditizing market,”
says Jaeckle. “It’s reasonable that our future growth will be enhanced by at least
one percent by reducing customer churn and selling more deeply, a benefit worth
approximately $150,000 additional gross profit annually.”
One way Jaeckle has improved customer service is by anticipating need. Says
Jaeckle, “If we know, for example, that in any given geographical area, housing
starts went up by x percent, we also know that about 90 days after that, we’re
going to be shipping product into that area.” Jaeckle can go to customers in the
area, let them know demand for certain types of flooring will be rising based
on the analyses they’ve done in Spotfire, and help its best customers in that
market develop a strategy to capture the upcoming demand. “It changes the
sales relationship in a powerful way,” says Jaeckle. “We become an information
provider who happens to be a very good distributor, rather than just a very good
distributor whose competitors are also pretty good.”
FUTURE
Today Jaeckle Distributors executives and sales staff use Spotfire, but that’s just
the start. “In the long-term, every employee at our company who needs to rely on
data to do their job effectively is going to be using Spotfire, which is pretty much
everyone,” says Jaeckle. “One of the things I’m really excited about is the new
geo-analytics and the KPI reporting with version 6. We absolutely will use those.”
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06/23/2014