South African Department of Defence, ARMSCOR, has moved from a legacy-driven reporting environment to an analytics-driven platform by implementing Qlik suite, encompassing Qlik Sense and Qlik NPrinting. By integrating Qlik, ARMSCOR has established a single source of truth, ensuring data accuracy and consistency across the enterprise.
As the arms procurement agency of the South African Department of Defence, ARMSCOR is responsible for the research and acquisition of solutions to ensure protection and security of South Africa and its citizens. Originally founded in 1968 as a weapons manufacturer, its focus has switched to procurement, foreign trade, product development and testing and evaluation. It currently has a workforce of around 1,500 employees.
While the provision of state-of-the art defence equipment and services is a critical responsibility, ARMSCOR is also keenly aware that it acts as an important hub in public sector transactions and cashflow. Its finance department handles both accounts payable and receivable and understands its role in ensuring the sector’s financial liquidity.
“Finance acts as a vital pillar in understanding how ARMSCOR is performing,” explains Zimasa Fayo, Business Intelligence Manager at ARMSCOR. “It is not just about who owes us money and who we need to pay; delays in our finance function can cause delays across the entire public sector.”
Solution for modernisation
In 2021, ARMSCOR realised that its disparate environment of legacy finance systems was preventing it from delivering on its responsibilities with the efficiency it wanted.
“We had dirty data and undocumented business rules that led to inaccuracies, inconsistencies, misinterpretation and lack of trust in the numbers,” says Fayo.
The analysis was basically ineffective and it also meant considerable delays. ARMSCOR would close its books at the end of the month but the numbers and insights would not get to executive level until two weeks later.
ARMSCOR knew there had to be a better way. It issued a tender outlining some basic criteria, which included ease of use, scalability and the flexibility to cover multiple areas of its operation. The other major requirements were self-service and visualisation.
When South Africa-based data specialist Insight Consulting proposed Qlik Sense and Qlik NPrinting, Fayo was impressed. “We looked at Qlik and saw a full and sustainable package, including some great data integration capabilities.”
ARMSCOR was looking to partner with someone well established in the country that could support the company and Insight met the criteria. ARMSCOR saw that Qlik Sense offered the interpretation and analysis capabilities it needed, while also being able to acquire data from across the organisation’s diverse IT environment.
“The scope of the project was to address data quality issues and process inefficiencies within ARMSCOR’s Finance department, ensuring the creation of a trusted single source of truth,” says Marco Afonso, Business Development Manager, Insight Consulting.
Process of modernisation
This foundational step was aimed to provide faster, more accurate, and actionable insights for executives across the organisation. By streamlining reporting processes, the initiative improved efficiency, consistency, and the reliability of financial data, enabling data-driven decision-making at all levels.
This approach not only enhanced the Finance department’s operational effectiveness but also contributed to better strategic alignment, ensuring that critical decisions were supported by accurate, and timely information throughout the organisation.
ARMSCOR relies on business-critical applications such as financial management systems, project tracking tools, and procurement systems to support its operations. These applications handle large volumes of data essential for maintaining efficiency, compliance, and operational excellence in defence-related activities.
Integrating Qlik products with ARMSCOR’s IT infrastructure involved deploying Qlik Sense on-premises, in alignment with security and compliance standards. Qlik was integrated with key systems, such as mainframe servers, project tracking, and procurement tools, enabling seamless data flow and real-time access across the organisation’s IT landscape.
For data migration, Qlik itself was used as the ETL tool, eliminating the need for any additional tools. An ETL process or extract, transform, and load process, is a data integration process that combines, cleans and organizes data from multiple sources into a single, consistent data set for storage in a data warehouse, data lake or other target system.
A detailed assessment of legacy data sources was conducted, followed by data cleansing and transformation directly within Qlik to ensure compatibility. Data was then extracted, transformed, and loaded into Qlik Sense for analysis.
Data governance measures were enforced to maintain data integrity throughout the migration. Historical data was consolidated into a centralised repository, providing a strong foundation for Qlik’s analytics and reporting capabilities.
Once migrated, the data was integrated into Qlik Sense’s associative engine, enabling users to explore and analyse insights dynamically. This integration allowed ARMSCOR to leverage both historical and current data, enhancing decision-making and operational efficiency across the organisation.
This streamlined integration and migration process ensured Armscor could maximise the value of its data using Qlik products.
Business benefits
Qlik Sense and Qlik NPrinting went live around 18 months after ARMSCOR launched the tender. The Qlik suite, encompassing Qlik Sense and Qlik NPrinting, has significantly enhanced the value derived from these applications. By integrating Qlik Sense, ARMSCOR established a single source of truth, ensuring data accuracy and consistency across departments.
This integration enables real-time insights, allowing decision-makers to monitor financial performance, track project progress, and optimise procurement processes more effectively.
Qlik’s associative engine empowers users to explore data relationships within critical systems, uncovering hidden patterns and actionable insights. Enhanced visualisations provide a clear overview of complex data, making it easier for executives and teams to identify trends, address bottlenecks, and improve operational decision-making.
With Qlik NPrinting, ARMSCOR automated its reporting processes, delivering customised, timely, and detailed reports to stakeholders. This reduced manual effort, improved data governance, and ensured that vital insights reached the right people when needed.
The Qlik suite transformed Armscor’s data utilisation, driving efficiency, fostering collaboration, and enabling informed, strategic decisions critical to its mission.
Moving from a legacy-driven reporting environment to an analytics-driven platform was a big jump for ARMSCOR and represents a huge leap forward for the Finance department. Processes that once took weeks are now completed in hours, with report distribution handled automatically by Qlik NPrinting.
After implementing Qlik, ARMSCOR is comfortable that they do not have to go through multiple systems to check quality and accuracy. And if the month-end books are closed today, the data is ready the next morning. With Qlik accessing data from multiple systems in near-real time, ARMSCOR is no longer tied to separate reports for each process.
Consolidated and visually appealing management reports are now available weekly and deliver key insights to executives across finance and beyond. With Qlik NPrinting, the analysis is placed into the hands of decision makers weekly and even daily.
Critical areas such as stakeholder reporting, which were previously limited to cumbersome spreadsheet-based processes, have been transferred to Qlik.
“Showing where we are financially is not a big exercise anymore. If a stakeholder gives us money, we need to report back to the stakeholder how much we spent and where. It is crucial that stakeholders have high levels of transparency and accuracy and with Qlik we can achieve that quickly and easily,” says Fayo.
Moving forward
Qlik’s adoption has changed attitudes at ARMSCOR, with information available at user fingertips, promoting data literacy across the organisation and generating interest from other functions. “Trust in the data is critical,” says Fayo.
ARMSCOR is now assessing how Qlik could benefit project management in its acquisition function. Also on the roadmap is building a data warehouse as a central repository to feed into ARMSCOR’s reporting processes. Qlik Data Integration would be the obvious route for getting data and enabling analytics in real time.
“Traditional data warehousing is not going to be the best fit. It would be resource-intensive, costly and dependent on code,” says Insight Consulting’s Afonso.
ARMSCOR is also integrating its human resources function. “As a public sector organisation, we need to keep a check on our employment statistics and report back regularly.”
That is information that Qlik can put at user fingertips. “Qlik has been a breeze,” reflects Fayo.
