Prism Case Study: Paylogic

Paylogic selected SiSense to meet their needs for a powerful and flexible business intelligence solution that would easily integrate with its existing open-source systems, and would allow non-technical business users to quickly create new reports and analytic queries.

What is Paylogic?

Paylogic is a B2B and B2C brand which provides public event organisers with various Information and communication technologies (ICT) solutions. The company’s core activity is delivering a solution intended for the supply and distribution of tickets for organisers of public events of every size (using the SaaS model). Paylogic offers additional services, including consumer support, various promotional services, marketing support, onsite event support, and hardware delivery.

Paylogic was launched in September 2006 and is currently active in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany with nearly 800 customers and millions of event tickets sold to consumers each year. Paylogic has offices in Groningen (Netherlands, Back Office), Amsterdam (Netherlands, Sales), Antwerp (Belgium, Sales) and Berlin (Germany, Sales). Currently there about 60 people (representing 36FTE) working for Paylogic.

What business needs was Paylogic looking to solve when they came across Prism?

Paylogic considers itself a next-generation technological company, and its organizational structure and operations are highly automated. Instead of employing a standard monolithic ERP system (e.g., SAP), Paylogic has built its IT infrastructure using corporate-environment open-source standards. Automation is approached from a decentralized perspective based on this open-source IT backbone. In other words, the company uses different software packages for different functions and ties them together to form an enterprise collaboration platform. The result is impressive: Paylogic enjoys no-compromise IT functionality and flexibility with extremely low software costs.

It was into this environment that the company sought to integrate a reporting and analytics tool. The company’s operational and historical data was consolidated into a homegrown data warehouse, based on a MySQL database.

Paylogic was looking for a powerful and flexible business intelligence solution that would easily integrate with its existing system, which would not require rebuilding the data warehouse, which would allow non-technical business users to quickly create new reports and analytic queries and which would be relatively inexpensive.

How was Paylogic trying to address these needs before implementing Prism?

Before Paylogic implemented Prism, the company relied on the technical expertise of a small number of people to create manual queries. Upon request from business users, the queries were run manually using a MySQL client and the results were exported to Excel for delivery.

What other solutions did Paylogic evaluate before selecting Prism?

Paylogic evaluated a well-known open source package (with paid premium service and support) and also looked at a Microsoft product.

Why did Paylogic select Prism over the alternatives?

Paylogic wanted a powerful and flexible business intelligence solution that would easily integrate with its existing systems, which would not require rebuilding the data warehouse, which would allow non-technical business users to quickly create new reports and analytic queries and which would be relatively inexpensive.

After evaluating the alternatives, Paylogic concluded that Prism was the only solution to deliver on all of the company’s requirements. Whereas their previous approach required hours for each new report, Prism enabled non-technical personnel to create reports in minutes.

How was the Prism implementation carried out?

During the trial phase, the company set up a test database and tested the software successfully using very cheap PC hardware. After selecting and purchasing Prism, more powerful hardware was used. Setup was very easy.

How is Paylogic using Prism to solve its business needs today?

The company is using Prism to generate all of its standard operational, managerial and financial reports. As adoption within the company is increasing, more and more managers are creating and customizing their own reports. Technical staff is still available to help, but demands on their time are now a fraction of what they were before.

What are the greatest business benefits that Paylogic is enjoying with Prism?

The biggest benefit of having Prism is that Paylogic quickly achieved uniform and comprehensive monitoring and reporting on all key performance indicators. Additionally, management now has very fast and easy access to any information they want, via custom reports, and are able to quickly test "what-if" hypotheses using Prism.

What do Paylogic's Prism users have to say about the product?

SiSense Prism provided us with a powerful reporting tool over our custom-built data warehouse. The software is very easy to deploy and very easy to operate. Without risking any vendor lock-in, we are now able to report and monitor key performance indicators in a uniform and automated manner. Because of the system's ease of use, custom reports can be made in minutes, providing a powerful way to quickly test any hypothesis. The people at SiSense have been very helpful and accommodating.
–Bart Wesselink, CFO, Paylogic