Elstead Lighting, a renowned multinational lighting company headquartered in the United Kingdom, has further enhanced its data-driven capabilities by leveraging FastClose’s cutting-edge real-time corporate performance management solution to create dynamic Power BI dashboards for end-users.
Richard Muller, Group Financial Manager at Elstead Lighting, explained the company’s journey with FastClose:
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Our initial adoption of FastClose was primarily aimed at monitoring daily order movements, providing us with invaluable insights into order shipment schedules and promises, along with essential information related to returns, deliveries, and invoices. We subsequently expanded our utilization to track ‘as of stock’ values, offering us the ability to review historical stock values, a feature not available in Epicor.
Elstead Lighting’s next step was to make key performance indicators (KPIs) and graphical reports accessible to sales and cost centre managers.
Kirsten Croud, Accounts Assistant, highlighted FastClose’s seamless integration with Power BI:
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FastClose offers an impressive array of pre-canned templates across most Epicor modules, simplifying the data selection process for Power BI integration. This eliminated the need for IT department involvement as FastClose handles complex table joins. We have the flexibility to select from hundreds of data elements in each template, ensuring we have the information we need.
She further elaborated on the dashboard creation process:
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I started with the margin report, selecting data elements like customer details, sales figures, costs, margins, periods, years, sales representatives, and more. The simplicity of creating a column report without subtotals or totals is crucial, as Power BI performs the necessary calculations. FastClose’s scheduler automates report generation and data extraction to a shared network drive, offering scheduling options ranging from weekly to every five minutes, depending on the desired data freshness.
Once the data is extracted, connecting it to Power BI is straightforward. While Power BI has a learning curve, numerous online tutorials are available. FastClose provides instructional videos for this process. After creating the desktop version, I can easily share it with team members, and they can refresh the data with a simple click, ensuring they always have up-to-date information at their fingertips.
Nick Gomersall, CEO of FastClose, emphasized FastClose’s unique value:
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FastClose empowers end-users to take control of Power BI dashboard creation, reducing reliance on IT or external consultants. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we seamlessly integrate with Power BI, providing incredible flexibility for the management team. Ad-hoc requests can be fulfilled instantly by the accounts team.
Mike Bell, CFO of Elstead Lighting, shared his positive experience with FastClose:
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FastClose has consistently proven its worth in accessing the data necessary for management analysis and audit during month-end close processes. I wholeheartedly recommend FastClose.
To discover more about how FastClose can help you accelerate your dashboard creation with Power BI
Elstead Lighting is a leading multinational lighting company headquartered in the United Kingdom, known for its exceptional range of lighting products and innovative solutions. With a commitment to quality and design excellence, Elstead Lighting continues to illuminate spaces around the world.
For more information, visit https://www.elsteadlighting.com/
FastClose is a cutting-edge corporate performance management solution that empowers organizations to streamline financial reporting, data analysis, and dashboard creation. FastClose seamlessly integrates with popular BI tools like Power BI, allowing end-users to harness the full potential of their data.
