MG Kailis reels in business intelligence

Perth-based marine corporation, MG Kailis, is using business intelligence (BI) to capture data on fish stocks in its fishery division and predict stock levels in its jewellery division.

The company operates a number of fishing vessels in the Perth region and three retail jewellery stores in Western Australia. In addition, it has jewellery stockists in New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory.

Chief financial officer, Grant Rockman, told CIO Australia that the use of IBM Cognos BI 10 in its fisheries division means MG Kailis can capture data on the species, grade and size of each fisheries catch. This information is then used to determine when and where its fisheries staff should be casting their nets.

“We feed in WA Department of Fisheries survey data from the beginning of the season that tell us what the catch levels should be at,” he said.

“Staff compare that [Department of Fisheries] information to 40 years of catch data hosted in Cognos and have a greater idea of species mix and volume of catch for that year. We can than manage our fishing fleet accordingly in advance.”

In addition, MG Kailis is using the data for sustainable fishing. For example, if a particular species of fish is showing signs of falling numbers, fisheries staff will leave that species alone to recover.

“Everywhere that we fish in Perth, we run the entire fisheries so we’re not competing against anyone. Sustainability is an economic necessity for future years,” Rockman said.

The BI system was implemented on 30 June, 2011. According to Rockman, the company has saved hours of manual spread sheet based processing and reduced reporting workload by as much as 99 per cent for business analysts across the business divisions.

“The best thing with BI is that we have six different sites around Australia where we operate and people can look at the same data no matter where they are located,” he said.

“Staff in other sites can comment on documents in the [BI] system in virtual real time.”

Jewellery division

According to Rockman, the use of BI has enabled the company’s jewellery division to predict the necessary stock levels for each item based on customer demand, and schedule jewellery production accordingly.

“We’ve been able to pull in forecasting information from our retail stores and Australian stockists, compare that to historical information on [consumer] purchasing and then compare that to the raw jewellery materials we have in stock,” he said.

“We can drive stock and sales planning through a combination of information from that forecasting.”

Turning to other IT projects, Rockman said the company is in the process of replacing its files and servers with SharePoint.

This implementation is expected to be completed in mid-August 2012 across the entire MG Kailis business.

“This will allow our intranet site to become a database for accessing information. It will be a [staff] self-help kiosk for multiple functions around the company,” he said.

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

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