Office workers spend 10% of their time on manual data entry, according to 2024 research. That's half a day every week just moving information between systems instead of using it to make decisions.
This points to a bigger problem with how most organisations use analytics. Your dashboards show you what's happening, but when you need to act on what you've found, you have to leave the system entirely and start working somewhere else.
Simon Kirby, Chief Solutions Officer at Inphinity, describes what he hears from customers. "People were saying, why can't I use Qlik as a workflow application? Why can't I add commentary? Why can't I do risk management or planning or forecasting?"
These are reasonable requests. When you spot that your forecast needs updating, you want to update it there and then. When stock levels become critical, you need to record what you're doing about it. When numbers change unexpectedly, someone on your team needs to be able to explain why.
The problem is that most analytics platforms force you to switch between systems. You see the insight in one place, but you have to go somewhere else to act on it.
Simon defines operational analytics in specific terms. "You're doing analysis combined with actionability to deliver an outcome."
This is different from traditional business intelligence, which focuses on showing you and tracking what has happened. Operational analytics is about combining that insight with the ability to take action in the same place.
Simon also points out something about terminology. Most people call this capability "write-back", but he explains that term creates confusion. "Write-back is a bit of a misleading statement, right? You feel like you're writing back to your source systems."
What's actually happening is different. You're not pushing data back to your ERP or CRM. You're capturing completely new information like forecasts, commentary, actions, and decisions, and storing them directly inside your analytics environment. That's why Inphinity uses the term "data entry" instead.
Inphinity is a Qlik Technology Partner that specialises in extending Qlik rather than competing with it. The company builds Qlik-native extensions for data entry, workflow management, and process intelligence.
Founded by Martin Kostic in 2019, Inphinity emerged as a spin off from Martin’s Qlik Consultancy called EMARK. At the time, EMARKs customer was using Qlik Sense and needed to add commentary to dashboards. The EMARK development team built a basic extension to solve that problem, but Kostic recognised they'd created something with much broader application opportunity.
That capability evolved into a platform with three core products: Inphinity Forms for data entry and planning, Inphinity Flow for process visualisation, and Inphinity Mole for analysing unstructured data. All are built to work natively inside Qlik, using its existing authentication and user experience.
The company works through a global partner network of Qlik consultancies and resellers. Rather than positioning as a standalone product, Inphinity provides the layer that turns read-only analytics in Qlik Sense into operational applications.
The approach works across a wide range of operational challenges.
Sales planning and forecasting is one of the most common applications. Sales teams enter their forecasts directly into Qlik dashboards at customer or product level, replacing spreadsheet-based planning and shortening planning cycles significantly.
Budgeting and financial modelling follows the same principle. Finance teams input budgets and adjustments in Qlik instead of maintaining separate Excel templates, creating a single governed environment where everyone works from the same numbers.
Data quality management helps identify discrepancies that need correcting in source systems. Bell Group, for example, uses Inphinity to capture which employees are driving their vans at branch level. The transport team compares this against their fleet management system and updates the source accordingly, avoiding additional licence costs.
These applications share a common pattern. Teams see the data and act on it in the same place, removing the friction of switching between systems.
Bell Group provides a clear example of what this looks like in practice. They were managing holidays and staff absence using Excel spreadsheets, with the 35 Branch Managers across the UK responsible for capturing the information and then sending it the HR team.
The HR team then had to consolidate all the data together using Copy / Paste into one central version. Simon describes it as "a nightmare for them".
Bell Group knew a HR system would arrive eventually, but not for a couple of years. Their Analytics team decided to build a holiday and absence management system using Qlik and Inphinity instead of waiting.
The solution gave the business far greater control than the spreadsheets had. It also let the Analytics team build several apps on top of that data, combining it with master data from source systems and pushing it out to other areas of the business.
Unlike Excel, Inphinity tracks who made changes and when, providing a full audit trail. Bell Group used this several times when administrative errors occurred in the forms, allowing quick resolution.
Simon points out what this represents. "You can start to build things that you'd never think of building in Qlik."
A leading UK food delivery company was tracking their produce inventory using Excel spreadsheets. They had hundreds of them - a separate spreadsheet for carrots, another for parsnips, and so on for every ingredient they needed.
One of their team members described the situation to Simon: "We had spreadsheets for everything. It was crazy."
They built a Qlik application that kept track of the stock levels for all their produce. When levels hit certain thresholds, triggers would fire, alerts would go out, and they would place new orders to make sure they had enough stock to meet demand.
But they still had a problem around recording risk. They needed a way to keep track of risk situations and any actions that needed to happen when something went wrong.
They added Inphinity to their supply management system to handle comments, tracking, and risk management.
Simon explains what they created. "They don't use Qlik for Business Intelligence, they use Qlik for operational analytics."
Some organisations are taking this approach even further. Simon explains that they're replacing not just Excel spreadsheets but Microsoft Access databases as well.
If you've used Access, you'll remember it had tables, forms, logic and reports built in. Qlik has similar capabilities, but traditionally you couldn't enter and save data inside it. You could only pull data from source systems.
Adding data entry removes that limitation completely.
Simon describes what changes. "When you start to do data entry inside Qlik, you really can change the way that people use the tool. You can start to build things that you'd never think of building in Qlik."
This opens up applications that have nothing to do with traditional business intelligence, such as the holiday management system that Bell Group built.
When you build transactional systems that people use every day inside your analytics platform, something important happens to how organisations think about that platform.
Simon describes it perfectly: “Adding data entry capabilities into Qlik, fundamentally changes the way a business interacts with Qlik Applications. Users may only use a BI Dashboard once a day, week or month. But when users need to enter data into a system in Qlik, then it will often be used multiple times each day. This often drives more interest in Qlik solutions and increases its popularity."
With 75.9% of organisations now having governance policies specifically for BI and analytics, according to 2025 research, the importance of proper governance in these systems is clear.
When you're adding the ability for people to enter and modify data inside your analytics platform, governance becomes essential. Different team members need appropriate access levels. Changes need to be logged properly. Approvals need to be tracked.
Data integrity is also critical. When someone updates a forecast or records an action, that information needs to flow back into your data model correctly.
This approach works particularly well when you're already using Qlik. Adding Inphinity extends what you already have rather than requiring you to implement a completely separate system.
It's especially valuable when the gap between seeing problems in your dashboards and actually doing something about them is costing you time or money.
It's less suitable when you genuinely need a full ERP or CRM system, when your source systems already handle workflow well, or when you don't have analytics platforms that can support this kind of extension.
As an Elite Qlik Partner and Inphinity partner, we help UK organisations make the shift from passive reporting to active problem solving.
Our approach starts with understanding where the gap between insight and action is actually costing you in concrete terms. Not every organisation needs operational analytics, but when you do, the implementation needs to fit your specific workflows precisely.
We work with organisations across manufacturing, retail, hospitality, higher education, financial services, and other sectors where closing this gap can deliver genuine competitive advantage.
Check out our list of services.
Simon sums up the fundamental issue. "If you've got data and analysis but you don't ever take action, you're missing an important opportunity to simplify and optimise your business."
You can have sophisticated analytics showing you exactly what's happening and why. But if your team still needs to leave the system completely to do something about what they've learned, you've only addressed half of what you need to address.
The combination of Qlik and Inphinity closes that gap by turning passive reporting into active problem solving, with both the insight and the action happening in the same place.
Want to explore whether operational analytics could work for your organisation?
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