Rowico Home is a family-owned company that creates stylish and sustainable furniture with a Scandinavian design. The company was founded in 1971 and sells its products through its own web shop and via retailers throughout Europe. The company has been FSC-certified since 2018.
The challenge
Rowico Home is on an expansive growth journey. The company is launching new product categories and breaking into new markets – while working with new media channels. This progress means significantly more data to manage. They also operate in a conservative industry that is facing major adjustments, with rapid changes in consumer behaviour and an ever-faster market pace. Therefore, the company needs tools that can support a more data-driven workflow.
Rowico Homes’ previous BI solution left much to be desired. The data model was convoluted with a maelstrom of tables interconnected with no apparent clarity. Random loading also led to unreliable data that could vary from day to day, and it was difficult to add new sources of information.
Furthermore, the company was at the mercy of its ERP system and had to rely on various smaller support systems, which involved many adaptations and developments. There was also a lack of long-term planning for how to grow within the existing architecture. A scalable environment was missing.
The solution
Through recommendations, Rowico Home approached Random Forest who came in early to get an in-depth understanding of the business and its challenges. After mapping out the needs and deciding on a path forward, the companies joined forces and started to build a completely new data platform from the ground up:
”We’ve developed a parameter-controlled database – a data warehouse – that uses our own RF engine. The starting point is Microsoft Azure’s cloud platform, where we use various components such as Databricks and Data Factory to collect, transform and send data to all the places where it’s needed. The client can then easily access all reports and figures through Power BI and see how the company is performing. Based on authorized accesses, of course”, says Marcus Toftås, BI consultant at Random Forest.
The report structure itself is built around a number of different report areas, such as order intake, sales, inventory and so on. In each such area, there is a set of report pages with visuals, tables, buttons etc that enable the client to follow the development in different time intervals.
Business benefits
With the help of Power BI, Rowico Home has gained access to real-time data that creates insights and provides business benefits. They can now optimize resources, make faster decisions, reduce costs, make more accurate forecasts and improve financial management. In the long run, this helps to maximize both returns and profitability in the company’s investments.
”The collaboration with Random Forest has been very successful and their commitment and knowledge have been decisive in bringing this project to completion with such fine results. They have a broad skill set and a proven working model when it comes to building this type of architecture, and it suits us very well. They also challenge us in how we view our business and assist us in advancing it even more”, says Daniel Bjuvstam, CFO at Rowico Home.
Rowico Home has gained control and ownership of their own data, they understand where the numbers come from and where the calculations are made. In the past, they used a licensed product and were too dependent on their IT supplier, but this is no longer a problem since they have received a stable and future-proof architecture built in their own environment.
”The solution we’ve developed with Random Forest is built with a more robust architecture than we had before. Now, we can look forward to new analysis opportunities without having to worry about data quality. We couldn’t be happier!”, says Björn Sahlquist, CDO at Rowico Home.
Customer case video below:
