Company
Since 1955 Drachen-Propangas GmbH has been supplying kite propane gas and has grown to an enterprise of over 200 employees. From supplying liquid gas in bottles to a full supply system, Drachen-Propanas offers the complete spectrum of energy services and ranks amongst the largest supply enterprises in Germany.

BOARD Solution
The supply market in Germany is very aggressive and demands constant price adjustments along with short response times in order for a company to remain competitive. Before selecting BOARD, Drachen-Propangas used excel spreadsheets to analyze data from their 50 regional agencies and 7 sales offices which, as their business grew, became a very time consuming, labor intensive and error-prone process. The introduction of a new ERP System in 2005 forced the company to start looking for new ways of analysing and evaluating their data.

UBL, a long-time BOARD business partner, delivered a proof of concept to Drachen-Propangas in just two days using real data from their commodity management system. From the first results we realized the efficiency and advantages of a BI Solution in general, explains Mr. Georg. For example, the allocation of gas per kilogram for a customer group and group of articles (statistics) would have taken many hours or days. Right after the POC was presented, a decision became clear and BOARD was implemented a few days later.

Business Benefit
Today BOARD provides Drachen-Propangas access to updated statistics at the push of a button. Mr. Georg explains that one of the main advantages that BOARD offers is allowing them to quickly analyse, control and correct the conversion default prices. BOARD also allowed the integration of cost centers and cost calculations which were done manually before. BOARD omitted time consuming, manual processes thus allowing strategic decisions to be made faster and more efficiently.