Qlik Connect 2025 | Kennie Greagen, Foodbank Victoria & Julie Kae, Qlik

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Kennie Greagen

Applied Research & Innovation Manager

Foodbank Victoria

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play_circle_outline Mapping communities to provide culturally appropriate food

play_circle_outline Empowering Nonprofits: Qlik.org's Impact Through Data-Driven Tech for Good Initiatives

play_circle_outline Empowering Organizations with Limited Resources through AI Automation and Technology Democratization

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Kennie Greagen, Foodbank Victoria & Julie Kae, Qlik

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Kennie Greagen

Applied Research & Innovation Manager Foodbank Victoria

Kennie Greagen, applied research and innovation manager at Foodbank Victoria, and Julie Kae, vice president of sustainability and social impact and executive director at Qlik.org, join theCUBE’s John Furrier and Bob Laliberte at Qlik Connect to discuss the power of data in addressing food insecurity and accelerating nonprofit impact. The conversation centers on how real-time analytics drive smarter, more sustainable operations across communities in need.

Greagen shares how Foodbank Victoria uses Qlik tools to optimize distribution and reduce waste, ble... Read more

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What company have we partnered with for the last seven years and how is their software embedded in our daily work environment at the Food Bank? add

What is one of the pieces of work that has been done over the last two years in order to provide food relief with dignity to a diverse community in Melbourne? add

What kind of support has Qlik provided to organizations like Food Bank Victoria and how has technology helped non-profit organizations better serve their beneficiaries? add

What is the trend regarding organizations not needing to be experts in databases in order to take advantage of technology like Qlik, and how do companies like Food Bank Victoria support organizations with limited resources in accessing technology? add

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Kennie Greagen, Foodbank Victoria & Julie Kae, Qlik

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>> Welcome back to one of theCUBE's live coverage here in Orlando, Florida for Qlik Connect 2025. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with Bob Laliberte from theCUBE Research, bringing down all the data, bringing you all the stories. Kennie Greagen's here. She's the applied research and innovation manager at Food Bank Victoria. Julie Kae, VP of Sustainability and executive director at qlick.org. Great story here on the use of data to make things more efficient. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate you.

>> Thanks for having me.

>> So first of all, let's tell a story, set the table, qlik.org and your relationship. Talk about the partnership real quick and we'll get into the conversation.

>> So we have partnered with Qlik through a company called for the last seven years or so. I've worked at Food Bank for four years and we basically have partnered with Qlik since then. So the way we work with Qlik is it's embedded in our daily work environment. Everybody in the organization is using it. We've got a handful of developers and we're basically just trying to make delivering food to the community easier, faster, and smoother.

>> It sounds easy, but there's a lot of problems. Share the problem, scope the problem that you guys are addressing and how the data is kind of infused in to make it more efficient and more productive.

>> So some of the main challenges that we have in delivering food to our communities, we've received the food often quite short-dated. So 70% of our stock is donated to us from manufacturers, growers, supermarkets, and often it'll come into the warehouse needing to go straight back out of the warehouse because otherwise it won't be good for consumption. So we use data to understand as well as we can what we've got coming in and how quickly we need to move it so that we can prioritize based on how fast the food needs to go out to actually get it to the community through our partners so that it is useful.

>> If you don't do that, it's wasted. You got to carry it, you got to dispose it, so that you're under a clock essentially.

>> That's exactly right. And since we started using Qlik to understand how we could move the food and move it quickly, we've been able to drop our waste to under 1%.

>> Okay. Give an example of data in action because this is the whole concept of the show here, we've been talking about is dashboards to decision engine seems to be the theme. Decisions meaning, your decisions get it out fast.

>> Yeah.

>> What examples can you share because I think this is a really acute case of value, right? So can you share how Qlik's being used, what's happened with it and without it, what would it be like?

>> Yeah. Absolutely. So one of the pieces of work that we've done in Qlik over the last two years or so is to basically map our community to understand where the greatest pockets of need are and who are the people in those communities that we're serving. We have quite a diverse community in Melbourne, and so we need to ensure that we've got the right food for people. One of our biggest values is to provide food relief with dignity. And so that a part of that is understanding who the food is going to so that we can make sure that we've got culturally appropriate food. So we use data from all kinds of external sources, the government, schools, charity partners, and use that to map who the people are that the food is going to so that we can then make sure that our charity partners are able to get the right food. That drives our procurement program. So effectively the 30% of stock that we purchase is purchased based on the data that we've got about our community and the data that we've got about the stock that we've got in our warehouse, some predictive modeling to understand what we might have coming in so that we know what we need to buy to kind of top up that food offering.

>> Can you talk about the Qlik side? Because qlik.org, this is not your business financial services company. This is a real mission-critical mission.

Julie Kae

>> Absolutely.

>> Talk about the role you guys are playing and what you're seeing on your side because they're embedded, they're instrumenting running their operation.

Julie Kae

>> Yeah. Yeah. So Qlik has supported organizations like Food Bank Victoria since our inception and actually in a kind of programmatic way as qlik.org for over 15 years. And what we see within kind of the nonprofit sector is an incredible need for technology. One, to better leverage data so that they can serve their beneficiaries faster, more efficiently, less waste, all of that, but have very common problems to all of Qlik's customers, right? And there's data in different silos that you want to bring together. You need to do it quickly, you need to make decisions, you need to prioritize. And nonprofits that we work with are doing all of that under a significant amount of time sensitivity. Right? We work on the number of humanitarian aid organizations, one in particular Direct Relief out of California, responding to the refugee crisis when Ukraine was invaded and use data to understand where refugees were going so that they could get their medical supplies on the ground to help those people upon arrival. Right? So these organizations are under so much pressure to help people, save lives, provide food, kind of lessen the vulnerabilities, if you will, of certain citizens, and through data can just drive that mission forward. Yeah. So we're proud to support it.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah. That sounds great. One of the big themes, obviously, in the keynote this morning, there was obviously a lot of talk about AI, generative AI, agentic AI. I wonder if you could comment on your use of it today in whatever form or fashion and then moving forward how you feel or what maybe some of the early use cases you want to apply it to?

>> Yeah. And we're actually at the very, very beginning of our AI journey being a relatively small organization. So we've kind of just gone through the exercise of working out what some potential use cases are and how we could use AI in all kinds of different forms. So we're looking at things like advanced analytics, which I mean it's a no-brainer with the tools that we've got, but we're also looking at tools that will allow our food donors a more pleasant experience in donating to us. At the moment, it's quite challenging. They email our sourcing team with the information of what they would like to donate, and then there's a fair bit of back and forth to try and organize it. So we are looking at developing an intelligent AI solution that will actually do it all automatically.

Bob Laliberte

>> Have your agents talk to their agents?

>> Right. Right.

Bob Laliberte

>> Exactly. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

>> Kennie, we had two sessions so far today that kind of brought up a theme and I'll just want to ask you about it because one was the Women Who Qlik, there's a big event tonight, five o'clock around Women Who Qlik, and the conversation was about you don't need to know about the databases and be a nerd to take advantage of what you guys are now doing with the Qlik. And the other one was on the partner side, there's a lot of new partners in your channels that don't have to be super experts at serverless and writing Python code. And here, the third one here is like you don't need to have the big budgets. There's a lot of democratization, so to speak, but also access to the technology in the application. So NGOs, nonprofits, impact organizations are pretty thin at the top. They put all their resources to the mission, and businesses have that same philosophy. So I want to ask you is that this is the trend, you don't need to know the databases. So how do you see this mission continuing? Because this gives organizations that don't have the resources, it could be public sector, it could be areas that don't have the massive IT budgets but have data and don't need to be a data scientist like to do it. What's your reaction to that? And what does that mean to the market?

Julie Kae

>> Yeah. No. Great question. So as part of our programming, we've offered discounted and/or free software and services to organizations who are serving that kind of mission, recognizing that people are very generous, organizations are very generous, but people also want to know that their donation or their support is going to the people in need. And that then ends up in this kind of environment whereby organizations that are serving those people in need aren't necessarily able to invest in themselves. And so programs like ours along with other technology companies and our partners of course, that have worked with Food Bank Victoria, recognize that and just is part of our give back program. So we feel that our employees want to get engaged, they want to support organizations, they want to leverage their skills to give back, and organizations like ours want to step in and support with our assets, again, so that we can all live healthier lives.

Bob Laliberte

>> So Julie, obviously a great mission that what you're doing, if we've got people watching out there who are part of an organization, how do they get involved? How did they... Give a plug for qlik.org and how organizations should reach out to you if they're interested in working, like the relationship you have here with Victoria Food Bank?

Julie Kae

>> Yeah. Certainly. So yeah, visit us at www.qlik.org and to learn more about how these programs kind of work and exist. And we have several use cases, examples of some other partners doing great work like Food Bank Victoria to kind of learn and see if that type of need exists within your organization that we can support and partner together.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah. I would assume that virtually all organizations like yours have a need for technology to overcome a lack of physical resources to be able to do them. And that we were just talking with James, your chief strategy officer, and is it from IDC and talking about the agents and whether they were digital workforce or digital laborers. But that certainly the more you can leverage something like that, having people doing tasks for you that you don't have to dedicate your own time is going to provide a lot of efficiencies back to you to work on more strategic initiatives, maybe reaching more people, right, greater reach. So I wonder if you could maybe just comment on that a little bit about, I know you're just starting the journey on AI, but how you're thinking about how do you get there faster and what's your time to comfort with that technology?

>> I think it's so important to be able to automate and use AI in any way that we can. And it is because like most charities, we are resource constrained financially, people, everything. So being able to do things in better ways more efficiently, as you said, just allows us to have the time to look at more valuable activity. So I think while we are really early in the journey of AI, it goes back to our data journey as well. Simply understanding the food that we've got and the product that we've got available and expect to have available to us. Before we had qlik in this data was really difficult. So the team would spend significant amounts of time trying to figure out what we needed to talk to partners, to talk to manufacturers, to ask for the donations that we needed, whereas now pun not intended, it's a click of a button.

>> Yeah. So the old way was a lot of time wasted what, weeks, months? I mean, just planning.

>> Yeah. Absolutely.

>> So the throughput on productivity is what, 10x?

>> At least. Yeah. Absolutely.

>> Huge value.

>> Absolutely. And we're growing so fast. The demand in Melbourne or in Victoria for food relief is huge. We're distributing 25 million meals a year, and that just grows every year. So being able to find that productivity and bring that back so that our team can be focusing on the really valuable added stuff that they're doing now is-

>> Sustainability story, and it's a humanity story.

Julie Kae

>> Absolutely.

>> Yeah.

>> Both in one.

Julie Kae

>> Yes.

>> And you guys must be-

Julie Kae

>> And she's even launching... You should talk about your food literacy programs. I mean, they're even launching food literacy programs in schools.

Bob Laliberte

>> Sure.

>> Yeah. So we've actually already got a cooking classes program in our schools. So we run a school breakfast program that goes out to about 1,200 schools. We'll be at 1,400 by the end of the year. And so we've run cooking classes programs through those educational facilities. They're currently targeted at the school kids and their families. So they're reaching people who maybe don't speak English as their first language, maybe don't understand how to cook with Western food and teaching them how to cook and how to cook healthy food options. And we're at the moment piloting a proof of concepts in one of our regional centers to actually expand that out to adults.

>> It's like what they're saying here in the Qlik teams, get the data at the right place at the right time. You're an application of that, that's the product.

>> Yeah.

Julie Kae

>> Yeah.

>> And otherwise it's wasted time spent and the output's not there. This is a great win for qlik.org. Take a minute to explain what you guys are working on. You mentioned some other projects. Explain the scope of qlik.org for the folks who may not know what you're working on.

Julie Kae

>> Yeah. So certainly. So like I said we support hundreds of NGOs around the world. Very proud to support organizations like the United Nations Secretariat, the World Health Organization, as well as NGOs in various countries who are working in the areas of either climate change, disaster relief, humanitarian aid, global health or education. And again, it's about data. It's about equipping these organizations with the power of technology to leverage data and specifically kind of the unique features of Qlik of bringing disparate data together so that they can make sense of it, reach more people faster, and get that support where it's needed most. And so we like the big hairy challenges, the more complex, the better, because that usually means a lot of different data needs to come together to understand it and understand what the solution could be. And so we love those projects.

>> The tech for good is a theme that's near and dear to our heart. Most people think, "Oh, the big bad tech companies." But in Impact where you have supply chain, humanitarian aid, tech's involved, the data. It's the data. It's not like-

Julie Kae

>> Data....

>> a tech thing, it's a data thing. So talk about that tech for good. There's a lot of tech companies that are early adopters joining up with missions.

Julie Kae

>> Yes.

>> Philanthropy missions, impact investing, kind of a cultural change. Could you share your thoughts on that because we're seeing action there?

Julie Kae

>> Right. Well, it's a cultural change, but it's also very personal for people. Right?

>> Yeah.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah.

Julie Kae

>> I have people, colleagues that support organizations that are finding homes for animals, to food relief or food insecurity, to climate change, to cancer research, what have you. People want to give back. They want to do good in the world. They want to have a purpose. They want to have a mission. And by equipping organizations with technology so that they can leverage their data to further their mission, we're also working with all our colleagues so that they feel like their skills can be put to use to kind of fuel their passion and support their purpose. And so it's just a really exciting kind of way to bring a bunch of data people together with nonprofits and missions to really define and fulfill that purpose.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah. So quick question for you. I mean, given your unique view and of all the organizations that you work with, do you have separate events to get those organizations together to better learn how to leverage their data more effectively and be able to sponsor that?

Julie Kae

>> I'd love to. We do go to a lot of events like Climate Week in New York or the UN General Assembly, the Annual Climate Conference in the fall, as well as there's some NGO conferences that take place that we do and kind of talk about our solutions so that, again, others can learn from that, share their experiences, and we can all get farther together.

Bob Laliberte

>> Absolutely. That's great.

>> Julie, Kennie, thank you for coming on theCUBE. Love your mission. Congratulations on success. Data is at the heart of all the problems, now for humanity, not just for productivity in business. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.

>> Thanks for having us.

>> It's theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with Bob Laliberte. We'll be back after this short break.