SUCCESS STORY – BÄKO HANSA

Optimizing the Qlik Landscape with iVIEW

BÄKO HANSA moves the Qlik backend to the cloud and brings structure to its KPIs

“In the past, our BI landscape was a real jungle of scripts, variables, and organically grown structures. With iVIEW Dataflow and the iVIEW Library, this jungle has been significantly cleared. Today, processes are clearly structured, KPIs are consistent, and data is available much faster. This creates transparency and provides us with a stable foundation for further development.”

Anne Eschenbrücher, Data Analyst, BÄKO HANSA eG

The Customer

BÄKO HANSA eG is one of the leading regional cooperatives within the BÄKO Group, the central trading and service organization for the bakery and confectionery trade in Germany. Headquartered in Hamburg, the company is supported by branch offices in Hildesheim, Grimmen and Michendorf. BÄKO HANSA supplies bakeries and confectioners with raw materials, semi-finished products, technical equipment, packaging, and a wide range of services, positioning itself as a reliable partner to traditional craftsmanship.

Solution at a glance

Initial Situation

To optimally support its member businesses and manage its own processes in a data-driven way, BÄKO HANSA has been using the Qlik data analytics solution for several years. Initially, the entire Qlik landscape was operated fully on premises. At a later stage, the company decided to gradually move to the cloud, first migrating the frontend (the Qlik apps) to the cloud.

This resulted in a hybrid system: analytics were executed in the cloud, while the backend—including data extraction and preprocessing from a central IBM Informix database and several Excel spreadsheets—continued to run on premises. The data was uploaded to the cloud via Qlik Data Transfer, where it was partially transformed and modeled before being loaded into the apps.

However, this split process proved to be slow, error-prone, and maintenance-intensive. In the event of issues, those responsible had to search for the root cause in multiple places at once—within the app, the cloud model, the cloud transformation layer, or on the local server. This made troubleshooting cumbersome and significantly extended resolution times.

In addition to the desire for greater process efficiency, overarching IT strategy considerations also played a role. “We want to make cost structures more transparent and consolidate resources,” explains Anne Eschenbrücher, Data Analyst at BÄKO HANSA. “Qlik is indispensable for us, but it is also a cost-intensive tool. That’s why we are looking for efficiency gains and cost-saving potential in other components.”

For the complete cloud migration, BÄKO HANSA was looking for a tool capable of centrally managing all data integration processes.

Solution

Introducing iVIEW Dataflow: Stabilizing and Modernizing Data Processes

The decision was made in favor of iVIEW Dataflow, a module of the iVIEW solution for business intelligence and data analytics in the Qlik environment developed by Informatec. It helps organizations centrally extract, transform, and prepare data from various sources for analytics tools such as Qlik.

“We ultimately chose iVIEW partly for cost reasons—it offers the required functionality while also being one of the more economical options,” adds Anne Eschenbrücher.

BÄKO HANSA aimed to operate the solution independently in the long term. To build internal expertise, the wholesaler booked a two-day iVIEW training course with Informatec. The consultants first guided the team through setting up the extractions. BÄKO HANSA then gradually migrated the existing on-premises extractions to iVIEW independently. This was followed by another training session focused on transformations, which took approximately one day. “The support was particularly positive: Informatec’s consultants responded very quickly to questions—usually within one to two hours,” says Anne Eschenbrücher.

“Initially, most of the challenges involved learning how the new tool works,” recalls Anne Eschenbrücher. “I originally come from a background in data engineering and process mining; Qlik and iVIEW were new to me. Nevertheless, I was able to get up to speed quickly. We made rapid progress and were able to implement the migration step by step successfully. This was also due to the good collaboration with Informatec.”

At the outset, the focus was on restructuring the extraction processes, as these had previously been running on the local server and frequently caused errors. The extraction process was rebuilt using iVIEW and moved to the cloud, resulting in significantly more stable data provisioning.

When it came to data transformations, the team opted for a more cautious approach. Existing transformations in Qlik scripts were gradually replicated in iVIEW and run in parallel with the legacy processes. This ensured that the new tables and data flows were implemented correctly and that results matched those of the previous processes.

The connection of individual Qlik apps to the new data sources was also carried out step by step. This allowed BÄKO HANSA to continuously verify result consistency while maintaining uninterrupted operations.

Although BÄKO HANSA operates iVIEW largely independently, the team selectively draws on Informatec’s support for special requirements—Informatec now also supports BÄKO as a Qlik partner. A current example is data cleansing in combination with delta loads: For daily data processing, BÄKO HANSA uses two types of extractions—full loads, which reload all relevant data since January 1, 2022, and more efficient delta loads, which capture only records added since the previous day. Delta loads save considerable time, especially for very large tables such as sales line items with more than 42 million entries.

In practice, however, a challenge emerged: orders can be modified or deleted retrospectively—for example, when a customer adjusts quantities or cancels an order. Such changes are not captured by a pure delta load, as it only loads new records since the last run and does not recheck existing entries. This led to discrepancies in analyses, such as revenue or sales figures. To avoid these inconsistencies, Informatec provided a template with automated processing steps that BÄKO HANSA now uses for these tables: every morning, the complete data set of the previous month is automatically deleted and reloaded.

Centralized KPI and variable management with the iVIEW Library

Following the successful introduction of iVIEW Dataflow, BÄKO HANSA addressed another success-critical topic that is essential for the success of BI initiatives: the consistent and efficient management of variables, KPIs, and definitions used in Qlik. Originally, variables were loaded into Qlik apps via a locally maintained Excel spreadsheet and, in some cases, even additional TXT files. Changes had to be made manually, uploaded, and then reloaded in the app. This process was cumbersome, error-prone, and offered no version control. It was particularly challenging because many variables were interdependent, and these dependencies were difficult to trace in Excel.

For this challenge as well, a module of the iVIEW framework is used: the iVIEW Library. It enables centralized variable management, rapid implementation of changes, and immediate updates in the apps. In addition, it shows which variables reference others.

BÄKO HANSA’s largest and most business-critical app—the VK revenue dashboards, which provide, among other things, all revenue and sales figures—was the first to be fully migrated to iVIEW Dataflow and the Library.

Application Areas and Benefits

The use of iVIEW Dataflow delivered significant improvements for BÄKO HANSA compared to the previous approach based on Qlik scripts. Instead of loading data from the local environment into the cloud via Qlik Data Transfer and then processing it further in various scripts, extraction and transformation can now be handled centrally in iVIEW. This reduces process complexity, increases stability, and makes data flows more transparent. Error sources that previously had to be investigated across multiple layers—such as the local server, cloud transformations, or app scripts—are thus avoided.

The benefits are particularly evident in terms of performance and data availability. In the past, data was often only fully available to business users between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m. Today, it is available around 6:30 a.m.—a decisive advantage for the many employees in purchasing who start their workday as early as 6:30 a.m. and can now access up-to-date information much earlier.

Another major advantage is the ability to monitor and optimize individual process steps in iVIEW Dataflow. For each step, it is clearly visible how long it takes to run. Bottlenecks can be easily identified and accelerated through parallelization—something that was not possible in this form with Qlik scripts. This transparency enables the team to continuously improve ongoing operations and increase overall data processing performance.

iVIEW also offers clear advantages in terms of maintenance and troubleshooting. Particularly helpful is the integrated email notification in the event of errors: when an issue occurs, the team receives an email in the morning with the affected process step and a log extract. This allows errors to be identified and resolved much more quickly. In the past, issues often only became apparent when employees reported during the course of the morning that data had not been loaded, with resolution frequently delayed until the afternoon.

The introduction of the iVIEW Library has made a decisive contribution to bringing order and consistency to the large number of KPIs used at BÄKO HANSA. Previously, variables were maintained in Excel and TXT files—often multiple times and with differing calculations. In some cases, the same KPI existed three times, each with a different definition. One of the central Excel files alone contained more than 3,000 entries, making management extremely complex and error-prone. Frequently, it went unnoticed that a variable already existed and was therefore added again—sometimes even with a different calculation logic.

This resulted in inconsistencies across apps and made it difficult for both the BI team and users to trust the data. A particularly striking example was the revenue KPI: in some apps, revenue was calculated based on invoice date, while in others it was based on delivery date. For business users, it was often unclear why figures differed, leading to mistrust in the data.

With the iVIEW Library, BÄKO HANSA was able to identify these multiple definitions, clean them up, and establish consistent rules across the board. Today, apps transparently indicate whether a KPI is based on invoice date or delivery date, for example.

As a result of this cleanup, the number of variables used in the apps was significantly reduced. Today, fewer but consistently defined KPIs are available—making them more consistent, transparent, and easier to maintain.

“In our largest app, we used to load 1,118 variables—many of which were not used at all. Today, thanks to the iVIEW Library, there are only around 250, and we work far more efficiently and with much greater clarity,” explains Anne Eschenbrücher.

iVIEW Dataflow and the iVIEW Library not only help BÄKO HANSA accelerate and stabilize existing processes, but also establish long-term order and structure within the BI landscape. Many of the existing Qlik apps had grown organically over the years and contained redundant variables and unnecessary functionality. With the introduction of iVIEW, BÄKO HANSA was able not only to eliminate legacy issues, but also to establish processes that prevent such uncontrolled growth from recurring. Changes to variables now take effect system-wide rather than in individual apps only. In addition, new applications consistently load only the data and KPIs that are truly required—an important step in keeping the BI environment lean, high-performing, and trustworthy over the long term.

Future

The migration to iVIEW Dataflow at BÄKO HANSA is approximately 75 percent complete. The migration is scheduled to be fully completed by the end of the next quarter. In parallel, the connection of Qlik apps to the iVIEW Library is being further advanced. In the long term, all approximately 46 existing apps are to be migrated to the Library.

“Informatec has developed an outstanding solution with iVIEW – you can tell that a great deal of expertise and experience has gone into it. At the same time, we highly value the collaborative support: when questions arise, the team responds quickly and pragmatically, often within just a few hours. This combination of technical excellence and reliable support makes Informatec an ideal partner for us.” Anne Eschenbrücher, Data Analyst, BÄKO HANSA eG

Summary