SIAM KUBOTA Scales Analytics and Strengthens Collaboration with Dealers
8x increase in users in just over two years
Automated refresh of one dashboard saved the business up to four hours per day
Daily insights on performance informs dealers’ sales strategies and planning
SIAM KUBOTA Corporation specializes in manufacturing, sales, and leasing of construction and farming equipment including agricultural drones. The business also provides after-sales service, including spare parts and onsite technical services and repairs.
Data has always been key to decision-making at SIAM KUBOTA Corporation and, with the introduction of Tableau, the business has elevated its data culture. Spreadsheets and presentations have been replaced with 4,000 live dashboards which can be accessed in real-time by those who need them. This includes manufacturing, sales, service, HR, and accounting teams as well as the business’ dealers.
The big challenge for every organization is to transform the way they use data to answer questions and solve problems and to interpret everything that is happening. That is why I think Tableau is a tool that can support every organization’s needs.
Transforming the ease and speed of analytics
With SIAM KUBOTA Corporation’s previous approach to analytics, it took hours of manual effort to model data and create dashboards for decision making. The business deployed Tableau to increase the ease and speed of analytics so that it could leverage its benefits more fully.
Starting with Tableau Server SIAM KUBOTA quickly moved to Tableau Cloud to take advantage of the scalable processing power and automatic upgrades. It also made it easy to manage data governance with features like permissions management.
“Rather than continually updating dashboards for the same use case, we can build one dashboard that can be refreshed automatically,” said Srisupundit. “It means our stakeholders no longer need to wait for data. With Tableau Cloud, people can just log on and all the information they need is there and can be viewed all on one page.”
Powering insights for the business and dealers
SIAM KUBOTA Corporation went live with Tableau in April 2020 and one of the first dashboards created was used to monitor the impact of COVID-19 on employees. The company has 3,000 employees and wanted to know on a daily basis whether they were healthy or had any symptoms. A Google Form was set up with a short questionnaire for employees to complete daily and the results were initially compiled manually. Automating this process with Tableau saved the company a half-day, every day on analysis.
The business now has a number of internal use cases for Tableau including sales forecasting, monitoring manufacturing lines, customer segmentation analysis, and making predictions about customer repurchase behavior.
SIAM KUBOTA Corporation also uses Tableau to better collaborate with its dealer network. For example, the business shares dashboards with dealers to notify them of market movements. It also monitors and analyzes the use of farming vehicles to let dealers know when they need servicing.
Building engagement and understanding of data analytics
In just over two years, SIAM KUBOTA Corporation has scaled its Tableau user base by 8x. Dashboards like the one created to navigate COVID-19 helped management and employees understand the value of Tableau and led to increased demand for more dashboards.
Engaging Tableau technical support to manage Tableau Cloud freed up the Digital Technology Division to focus on meeting this demand. It also meant they had more time to focus on building the business’ data culture.
The Digital Technology Division plans to increase adoption and build on the business’ data skills with activities like e-learning. It also plans to introduce machine learning into the business, first to predict customer repurchase and churn and then to predict machine breakdown and forecasted production volume.
Srisupundit shared that driving adoption of any new technology can be difficult for an organization, but demonstrating the value of Tableau has helped the team overcome that.
What our team focused on first is ensuring the business understood the value of Tableau. We provided clear proof to executives that we could provide the up-to-date information they needed and answer their questions faster.