Advanced BI solutions allow retailers to easily integrate and analyse data, from numerous sources, to deliver an accurate, comprehensive, realtime view of the organisation. This in turn allows them to identify where growth potential lies and how it can be converted into additional sales and revenue.
Information Builders, the supplier of business intelligence (BI) and analytics, information integrity and integration solutions, has demonstrated how companies can achieve a return on investment as a result of leveraging its products and solutions.
“By effectively integrating in-house data analysis and sharing, as well as streamlined communication between geographically dispersed locations and head offices, retailers are able to better cater to current and prospective customers – and fuel revenue and corporate growth,” says Johan Jurd, MD of InfoBuild, representing Information Builders in SA.
Given the distributed nature of the retail industry, ensuring that data is collected, analysed and shared efficiently and effectively, can pose challenges.
Information Builders has numerous retail customers who use its solutions to enable the real-time analysis and sharing of critical information needed to boost the bottom line and promote growth.
Bata is the global provider of footwear and fashion accessories with more than 5 000 retail locations in over 60 countries. Bata needed to provide its area managers with a tool that enables mobile access to accurate and updated data and reports.
Previously, the company relied on paper reports that were difficult to keep current and effectively glean information from outside of the office environment.
“To remedy this, Bata turned to Information Builders’ WebFOCUS Mobile solution, which lets managers compile reports directly from their mobile devices at dispersed store locations, allowing them to leave behind the paper reports on which they once relied,” says Jurd.
Using WebFOCUS, Bata’s data is automatically stored in the central database and can be accessed instantly for analysis as needed. Bata area managers now have mobile devices that provide them with real-time progress updates for sales, inventory and other KPIs for each individual store.
The additional insight and real-time business snap-shots gives area managers the ability to analyse specific areas of the business in real-time – such as shop visitors versus sales – and make more informed decisions about staffing, inventory and store expansion.
Wendy’s, the world’s third largest quick-service hamburger company, sought to re-brand to promote growth of sales and transactions. As part of this goal, the company needed to translate data from point-of-sale and back-office systems into actionable information that could aid decision-making for the management team.
“At the time, Wendy’s enterprise reporting was largely a batch process that consumed numerous mainframe computing cycles. To address these issues, Wendy’s used Information Builders’ WebFOCUS platform, which enabled staff to drill down into the data and view everything from high-level summaries. These would reflect all of North America and international to transactional-level detail reports on one particular restaurant,” says Jurd.
This type of insight allows Wendy’s to make more informed decisions, increase its ability to identify areas of improvement and provide training and education where needed. It also allowed for measurable profit and margin improvements at both company-owned restaurants across North America as well as its franchise partners, both domestic and international.
