Qlik, a leader in data discovery, today announced that New Zealand’s largest listed retailer, The Warehouse Group (TW Group), is using QlikView to analyse sales and customer conversion trends store by store to improve performance.
With more than 80 million records housed in a central Oracle data warehouse, TW Group needed a flexible guided analytics solution to help them more easily derive business value from their data. Daily sales reports had to be produced manually via the finance department, and team members needed a more automated system that would enhance response time and increase visibility into sales performance.
Once the business was introduced to QlikView, they were eager to use it immediately. One of the initial deployments combined data coming in from the individual store counters with hourly transaction information from the point of sale systems. In just two days the solution was up and running and they were able to show what was happening within each store in both hourly and daily increments, seven days a week. With these reports, regional and sales managers can now analyse conversion trends ─ such as the percentage of visitors who perform a transaction ─ and then target conversion efforts as needed.
“Conversion analysis visualisation was perhaps the most outstanding benefit of QlikView and helps pinpoint performance store by store,” said Kevin Rowland, Business Information Manager, at TW Group. “We have been able to gain insights that just weren’t possible previously and when I demonstrated this to the General Manager in charge of operations he stood and said ‘I could kiss you’.”
TW Group also uses QlikView to perform “click and collect” analysis for when customers buy online and pick up in store. Data from all of the relevant systems is fed into QlikView, which generates dashboards to track stock movements and collections all in one central hub. They have also implemented QlikView to produce group and board level reports to show performance by brand and by channel. This involves taking data from all of the Group companies, coming from Teradata, Oracle and multiple other SQL Server data warehouses.
“Overall, QlikView helps management to understand performance and where we can do better,” said Rowland. “Retail is a highly competitive business and store managers like to see how they are faring compared to, say, a neighboring store.”
“Data can be a very powerful tool for retailers, but only if it is made understandable and easily accessible to the right parties,” said Sharryn Millican, Vice President and Regional Director of Qlik Australia and New Zealand. “TW Group has taken analytics out of the back office of IT and has brought it directly onto the store floor. As a result, their team members can immediately evaluate what is going on within their stores and take proactive actions to improve performance and operations.”
Source: Qlik media release.