Starting with the release of Strategy ONE (March 2024), dossiers are also known as dashboards.
Retail is one of the most dynamic industries out there with a plethora of decisions that have to be made on a day-to-day basis. We at Empower BI have been fortunate enough to work with several retail customers, including one of the world’s Top 10 Retailers in Turnover, with operations all around the world.
What we have noticed in the last decade is that the focus has shifted from Marketing being the largest consumers of analytics to Finance & Controlling being the new data stewards and sponsors of BI Projects.
In that regard, corroborated with the technological development (mobile and cheaper processing power) the main demands from BI/analytics have shifted towards 3 areas:
1. Data and User Scalability
Instant access to huge amounts of data by hundreds, if not thousands, of users simultaneously.
One of our most successful projects implemented in several countries for our main retail customer involved replacing their current no longer satisfying solutions in those countries (QlikView, Tableau and Custom Coded Solutions) with a Strategy enterprise solution. The goal was to provide not only “a single version of truth” but “a single View of truth”, a common starting point, to hundreds of users on all levels inside the organization with access to data restricted by their level inside the organization.
Since the CFO was the sponsor of the project and we worked directly with controlling, we had to have extremely accurate data, at the lowest level (Daily invoice line level data including Customers and Articles) spanning a period of 3 years with Year-over-Year comparisons starting from Day level all the way to YTD (Year-to-Date) level.
We were required to provide information about sales, profitability, penetration rate, as well as counts of Customers, Articles, or Visits for over 50 dimensions. Additionally, our application had to provide responses in a reasonable time.
We managed to achieve all of these requirements by implementing portioned Strategy PRIME Intelligent Cubes, one of them reaching over 70 GB. On top of these, we placed a Web application consisting of linked Strategy Report Services Documents that provided not only a “single version of truth”, but a “single view of truth” to everyone in the organization, from the CFO all the way to the assortment managers on the store floors.
2. Mobility
Another one of our customers has over 300 stores spread out throughout the country. Needless to say, each of their 15 area managers as well as top management need instant access to data, whether it’s on Company, Area or Store level, as well as the possibility to enrich their current data with on the spot additions.
We were lucky enough to have the BI & Analytics initiative managed by a Controlling Manager (at that time) who was very knowledgeable of the company's business process. They were also passionate about the technological possibilities, which led to him becoming extremely savvy in this field as well.
We have implemented a series of cool projects, all using Strategy, such as Retail PL, Product Benchmarking Analysis, Fixed Assets Resolution, and Order Proposal and Replenishment. But the ones I will talk about here are two Mobile Applications:
Store Coach is an iPad app that allows the 15 area managers to go around the country to their respective stores, instantly pull out information about those store’s sales, profitability, inventory, service tickets and so on, but most importantly allows them to conduct visits (we used to call them inspections until corporate decided it sounds to menacing) during which they grade the store on various areas such as: observance of promotions, store appearance, salespeople behavior and so on. Aside from the grades, the area managers can also add pictures, comments, mark questions as priority check for next visits or signal special events such as: potential spaces for store, or competition opening stores nearby. All of this information gets centralized at headquarters and running instant analytics on it allows for quick and continuous improvement of the stores.
The CEO App was originally designed for the Company’s CEO who is extremely mobile and likes to know about several KPIs on stores when he visits them. We added information about the store's sales, profitability starting from yearly level all the way down to day and hour. The app also included results of the visits done with the Store Coach App so he could check up on area managers. The app was so successful that it has now become a top management app with new development requirements coming constantly.
3. Self Service Analytics
People in the controlling department have become highly savvy with data crunching tools especially with Excel. So, if we were to make Strategy the tool of choice for them we had to come out with a solution that will convince them to leave the 'dark side.' Since we didn’t have cookies, dossiers have become our main candy.
One great example where we used dossiers alongside Library was during the tests of a new algorithm for Sales Forecasting. It used to be that we would save hundreds of versions of reports with certain filters and send links in e-mails so after a while finding a version was becoming a herculean task. Fortunately, Strategy introduced Collaboration inside Library with the possibility to embed filters so now it’s very easy to collaborate, especially on data validation.
We’ve had situation where we started looking at data at the company level, then discovering the issues for a certain department in a certain month. Instead of writing a lengthy e-mail with screenshots and a link, we were able to just add a comment with embedded filters and our counterparts were able to pick up where we left off.
To Sum it Up
These would be the 3 major common points we noticed in all our implementations. Strategy performed superbly in all 3 areas helping us have successful projects that transformed into references, but more important, new projects for us. In that regard, we keep Strategy as our main technology partner and make sure all our consultants are continuously trained and certified in the latest version.
This blog post is a first out a series of blog posts where I will:
A note from the Community team
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