The Qlik Connect gathering in Orlando brought together a wide range of customers and company executives who offered their perspectives on how robotics, AI and data visualization solutions from QlikTech International AB and associated partners were making a difference.

One of these perspectives came from United Parcel Service Inc., the global shipping company. UPS has its own Supply Chain Solutions division that provides freight forwarding and warehousing services for multiple clients, and the firm showcased its robotic solution as part of the Qlik Connect showcase.

TheCUBE research analysts discuss key highlights from Qlik Connect.

“Over the last four to five years we’ve transformed our business, leaned heavily into robotics, AI, automation,” said Scott Hertel (pictured), director of product solutions and strategy (global fulfillment) at UPS Supply Chain Solutions. “[The robot] creates a route within the warehouse that it travels and allows our associates to stay in their zone and reduce travel. It’s really about where the digital meets the physical and how you bring that together in both an efficient operating environment [with] usable data and analytics that we can use to make better decisions.”

Hertel spoke with theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson at Qlik Connect, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. In addition to Hertel, Peterson also spoke with Casey George, executive vice president of global sales at Qlik; Emma McAlister, business intelligence and data analyst at Henderson Group; and Miranda Foster, vice president of worldwide communications at Qlik in separate interviews. (* Disclosure below.)

Using Qlik for supply chain management and AI

UPS is also using Qlik’s intelligent analytics platform as part of its supply chain management solution.

“With intelligent analytics, we use Qlik as providing data around our customer’s shipping profile, shipping weights, packages, trends, zones,” Hertel said. “Then we leverage it internally for a lot of internal analytics and reporting analysis on our customers and our business performance.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Scott Hertel:

News from this week’s conference featured the release of Qlik Answers, an offering that extracts valuable information from unstructured enterprise content. This latest announcement from Qlik will help businesses with AI integration, according to George.

“AI is at the tip of the spear of everything now,” George told theCUBE. “Our ability to embrace that technology, embed it and solve real business problems using Qlik Answers is super powerful. We can absolutely apply AI answers to business to get real business problems solved.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Casey George:

Applying analytics to data visualization solutions

Henderson Group, a consortium of four businesses in the retail grocery industry, has adopted Qlik data visualization solutions to manage the use of analytics within the company. This included Qlik Sense, a data visualization tool to facilitate data analytics.

“We recently launched a self-service initiative using Qlik Sense,” McAlister said. “We’ve been teaching multiple users across the business how to create their own analytics dashboards. The different departments and the end users are the one who know exactly what they need the data for, so we’ve been getting really creative, really interesting dashboards.”

Qlik Sense has helped Henderson Group in several key areas, including analyzing product performance based on location.

“In one of our warehouses, we’re looking where different products sit on the shelves,” McAlister explained. “We have a dashboard that analyzes different category performance. We’re looking at new product ranges and how the location of those in different stores or different store types is affecting the sales.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Emma McAlister:

Focus on responsible AI development

One of Qlik’s initiatives featured during the Connect event was the company’s AI Council, a group of AI experts tasked with a mission to accelerate the responsible development of the Qlik AI-driven product portfolio.

“We believe it’s a really big differentiator for us in the market and just in the whole space of AI,” Foster said. “These are folks who look at AI from a few different lenses, whether it’s through governance and legal, whether it’s through how we should be thinking about it and what we need to be doing. These are just really wise people that we’ve been able to bring into the Qlik ecosystem.”

From the responsible use of AI to robotics, data visualization and solving business problems, one of the primary messages from Qlik Connect is that the company’s solutions are resonating with its customers and fostering a high level of loyalty.

“We have a 93% retention rate with our customers,” Foster noted. “They continue to build in terms of the solutions that they are using. It’s something we’re really proud of as a company.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Miranda Foster, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of Qlik Connect:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Qlik Connect. Neither QlikTech International AB, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE