CASE STUDY
Technology
Small/Midsize
Business
Marketing
& Sales
KH Lloreda Takes a Clean and Tidy
Approach to Analytics
O
years, while much of
Spain’s C73 M19 Y40 K1 C65 M29verY79theK22pastC61three
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Europe has struggled in economic
household
doldrums, KH Lloreda, Spain’s leading household
cleaning
cleaning company, has been sparkling. It has
company cuts
seen annual revenues increase by more than 10
percent and has achieved an impressive ratio of
inefficiencies,
C0 M60 Y100 K17 C28 M88 Y70 K19 C48 M89 Y84
€500,000
revenue
K49 C61of
M66
Y61 K52 per employee.
spurs ideas
and propels
These impressive results are due in large part
global
to an aggressive growth strategy and
expansion with
forward-thinking management team, with
help from a business intelligence/dashboard
real-time
initiative. Thanks to the insights that business
business
intelligence provides, management now has
intelligence.
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BY J O E M U L L I C H
FIGURE 1
By the Numbers
Business Metric Employee revenue ratio
KH Lloreda’s Results
€500,000 per employee per year
Annual revenue growth over >10%
last two years
Improvement in time preparing financial
period closing statements
60%
Source: KH Lloreda, 2015
By any measure, KH Lloreda’s recent business and employee
performance is remarkable, especially for a large and
established consumer products company.
degreaser today named KH-7. By the early 1990s,
the actionable information it needs to act
demand for metallic coatings began to wane,
swiftly and support the company’s expansion
and management shifted its strategy to focus
into new regions of the world (see Figure 1,
exclusively on manufacturing and marketing
“By the Numbers”).
household cleaners.
“To achieve a higher level of global
Today, KH Lloreda sells about 25 million bottles a
performance, we needed to quickly
year of its kitchen and bathroom cleaners,
understand information from all areas of the
stain-removers and degreasers in Spain, holding
company and enable those different areas to
roughly a 60 percent market share in this country.
collaborate more effectively,” explains David
The company has a smaller, but strong, presence
Socias, KH Lloreda’s controller and chief
in Italy, Portugal, France and Colombia, among
information officer. “This impacts everything
other countries.
we do, down to determining which
investments in employee training lead to the
With expanding global markets opening new
most improvement in performance.”
opportunities, another strategic shift is
underway. In 2013, KH Lloreda signed
APRIL 2015
© Copyright 2015.
Forbes Insights.
All rights reserved.
A HISTORY OF INNOVATION
agreements with distributors in Hong Kong,
Growth and innovation have been driving
Chile, Mexico and five other countries. Then, in
forces at KH Lloreda since its founding in 1949
late 2014, KH Lloreda struck a deal with
as a pioneer in developing metal coatings for
consumer goods powerhouse Unilever to
cutlery, watches, jewelry and electronics. Out
distribute two of its brands in Spain.
of necessity, it produced its own cleaning
products for the materials, including a popular
FORBES INSIGHTS
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CASE STUDY
entering the global degreaser market, and it
Analytics Driving Growth
Worldwide
was equally clear they needed an analytics
Region
dashboard with pertinent information to
Americas
execute that strategy,” recalls Victor
76%
Agramunt, head of Seidor Consulting, which
Asia-Pacific
helped implement KH Lloreda’s business
“The board had a clear strategy about
“To achieve a
higher level of
global
performance,
we needed to
quickly
understand
information
from all areas
of the
company and
enable those
different areas
to collaborate
more
effectively.”
— DAV I D S O C I A S ,
CO N T R O L L E R A N D
C H I E F I N F O R M ATION OFFICER,
K H L LO R E DA
intelligence platform. Arriving at such a
decision is not uncommon. In fact, according
to a 2013 KPMG survey of CFOs and CIOs from
major companies around the world, business
intelligence has become a major factor in
driving growth (see Figure 2, “Analytics
FIGURE 2
72%
EMEA
60%
Overall
69%
Base: survey of 144 CFOs and CIOs from major worldwide corporations
Source: KPMG, 2013, http://goo.gl/zIFcI0
Driving Growth Worldwide”).
Q: How important is the use of data and analytics to your
company’s current growth strategy? (percent of respondents
answering “crucially important” or “very important”)
HANDLING “THE SPANISH CRISIS”
their actions are in fact improving global
After weighing its options, KH Lloreda decided
performance. Company consultant Agramunt says
to implement business intelligence software
this helped KH Lloreda weather the recent economic
that provides board members with dashboards
crisis that impacted the whole European community.
presenting a unified view of the company’s
It started with the real estate crash and quickly
financial health. The platform enables it to
radiated to other industries. “Salaries were frozen,
leverage real-time intelligence from massive
family spending was reduced and people stopped
amounts of data, providing non-technologists
consuming,” he says.
with easy ways to combine and visualize data
in infographics and other formats that reveal
Because of the insights from better use of data,
immediate insights.
KH Lloreda can identify product lines with more
profit and customers with better ROI, fortifying it
The dashboards track classic key performance
against the overall decrease in spending that hurt
indicators (KPIs), including quantities shipped,
many other consumer product companies. The
discounts, revenue, and margins broken out
data-driven insights also enable the company to
by brand, SKU, country, vendor and customer.
reduce inefficiencies; among other steps,
By eliminating the manual steps needed for
management can fine-tune transport costs, as well
end-period closing, board members can make
as determine the ideal times to either reduce
strategic decisions faster and with more
stocks or keep goods on hand.
confidence. This has resulted in a 60 percent
time-savings compared to the effort the chief
BIG RISE IN PRODUCTIVITY
information officer and chief risk officer
KH Lloreda realized early on that global expansion
previously devoted to preparing the period
would place new demands on its employees,
closing at the end of each month, the
requiring them to evolve new ways of doing
equivalent of 36 days per year.
business. The answer to the people issues was a
human capital management dashboard, built
What’s more, the board can review initiatives that
using the same business intelligence software and
require close collaboration with other
visual tools used by the company’s board.
management teams and understand whether
2
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CASE STUDY
“Now we are
seeing how
people in
different
departments
are evolving in
terms of what
is expected
from them.”
—XAV I E R
C A R R U E S CO, C H I E F
PROCESS OFFICER,
K H L LO R E DA
Visualizing Opportunities
“The human capital management director
FIGURE 3
asked for a solution to examine the
Improved operational efficiency
KH Lloreda workforce in terms of the impact
77%
on the company’s internationalization efforts,
Faster response to business change
innovation initiatives and people performance,”
62%
recalls Agramunt. Other areas of interest
Ability to identify new business opportunities
included better understanding of the working
environment, employee progress toward
Higher employee and partner productivity
goals, salary benchmarks and classic HR
47%
indicators such as workforce age and return
on training investments.
59%
Base: survey of 424 IT and business executives
Source: The Data Warehousing Institute, 2013, http://goo.gl/ypVZVF
Top benefits of data visualization technology.
(percent responding)
Before deploying the dashboard, the HR
department spent time understanding the data
to explore new ways to grow the company. The
needed to meet its goals. Today, it can monitor
dashboards help track the status of the ideas that
KPIs in performance, globalization and
are generated, including whether they have been
innovation, as well as the HR areas of gender,
approved and implemented, as well as the results
age, seniority, salary and workplace conditions.
of those implementations. Having this information
“Now we are seeing how people in different
available in an immediate and easy-to-use way
departments are evolving in terms of what is
has resulted in greater staff participation,
expected from them,” says Xavier Carruesco,
according to Carruesco.
chief process officer at KH Lloreda. By better
understanding its workforce, Carruesco adds, the
The next areas where KH Lloreda plans to focus its
company has significantly raised productivity.
business intelligence efforts are operations and
treasury management. Eventually, though,
Like KH Lloreda’s HR department, senior
management expects to expand analytics to all areas
managers across the business landscape are
of the company. After all, as KH Lloreda looks to
looking for more visual self-service tools to
become a household name around the world, it will
engage their workforces. According to a 2013
need even more good ideas—and with no limits
survey of 424 IT and business executives by
placed on the people who form them.•
The Data Warehousing Institute, improved
operational efficiency and higher employee
and partner productivity are two of the four
top benefits of data visualization (see Figure 3,
“Visualizing Opportunities).
PLANTING “IDEA FORESTS”
The availability of faster, more accurate data
ABOUT FORBES INSIGHTS
Forbes Insights is the strategic research and thought
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magazine and Forbes.com, whose combined media
properties reach nearly 50 million business decision-makers
worldwide on a monthly basis.
Bruce Rogers
CHIEF INSIGHTS OFFICER
throughout KH Lloreda is now transforming the
company in new ways that were unanticipated.
One such area is something that Carruesco
calls “idea forests.” This is where different
groups and leaders hold “innovation sessions”
Brian McLeod
DIRECTOR, NORTH AMERICA
Writer: Joe Mullich is a freelance business and
technology writer based in Sherman Oaks, Calif.
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CASE STUDY
Technology
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