It’s imperative for today’s businesses to leverage their data resources in making crucial company-wide decisions. To achieve that, JBS S.A. shed inefficient data analysis techniques in favor of newer, purpose-built, cloud-driven solutions.

“I think [for] any business to succeed, it needs to be able to have an analyst platform,” said Steph Robinson (pictured, left), Qlik manager at JBS. “One of the things that we found when I first started with JBS is we had QlikView. And prior to that, they were using like a lot of Excel reporting, so everything was on spreadsheets. And we had challenges with it concerning data quality.”

Robinson and Chris Powell (right), chief marketing officer of QlikTech International AB, spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Dave Vellante and Lisa Martin at the QlikWorld event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how JBS unlocked new data value areas given its continued expansion. (* Disclosure below.)

Staying on top of data demands

As the world’s largest meat processing company, JBS has to balance the needs of its multiple business units while keeping them profitable. Doing so naturally requires vast data processing and analysis, and the company has since ramped up from QlikView to QlikSense to keep up with those demands, Robinson added. One enabling factor for JBS has been the ease of carrying out the process.

“From QlikView, when we started going into QlikSense, we had something like 900 applications that had been built by business users,” Robinson explained. “We ran a whole project to get every single developer to take their apps from View, move them over to Sense and improve them. And from there, we’re now working on going into the cloud.”

Additionally, ensuring the data’s quality, combined with the laborious processes of automation, integration and the creation of trust parameters, form the majority of pain points Qlik customers face, according to Powell.

“There’s a lot of data; it’s raining cats and dogs of data,” he explained. “The integration side of it is a big piece, but then it’s really about moving into making sure you can trust it. And that’s the quality piece: There’s a huge trust factor as we’re trying to automate so many of these processes.”

Equally important is Qlik’s commitment to working with customers across the entire data value chain, as opposed to “just one piece of it”, according to Powell.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the QlikWorld event:

(* Disclosure: QlikTech International AB sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Qlik nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE