Goodwin and Chistye materials

"With QlikView the way of achievement of strategic objectives of the company became clearer"
Alexey Rappo, CEO, Goodwin and Chistye materials

The group including retail networks "Pure Materials" and "Goodwin" for 16 years actively develops in Moscow and the Moscow region. The Pure Materials trading house is a retail network of materials for construction, repair, arrangement of the house and giving. The range of goods makes more than 30,000 names of goods for the house, finishing and interior materials, tools and supplies for construction, plumbing fixtures and the engineering equipment, seasonal and gift and also garden and garden goods. The Goodwin trading house is the retail network of gifts of new generation opened in Moscow in 1995. The range of shops includes goods for a holiday, a toy and a game, souvenirs and gift sets, cosmetics and perfumery, goods for the house.

Prerequisites of the Project

In TD "Pure Materials" and "Goodwin" throughout the long period used an analytical system on the basis of OLAP technology. Data in an OLAP cubes were updated once a month that helped to solve long-term problems, but there was not enough for operational data analysis. "We understood long ago that our OLAP system needs to be changed, and is cardinal. In this plan transition in July, 2010 to a new management system for merchandising – Gestori Pro became "last straw". Change of the main source of data for OLAP - and meant reorganization of the existing analytical solution for 80%, including change of reference books and data marts, development of modules for daily data-refresh, creation of own client for an OLAP system. And at all these changes, the user qualities of new reports all the same would remain unsatisfactory. Therefore we made the decision to select and develop a BI product of new generation", Ekaterina Rudakova, the Chief information officer, Goodwin and Chistye comments on materials.
Choosing a Solution
Shortcomings of the existing analytical system became a starting point for formation of requirements to a new BI system. Key selection terms of BI became:
• Flexibility;
• Convenience of the user interface;
• Fast development of new analytical representations and connection of new sources.
"Having considerable experience with OLAP, we perfectly understood that the completeness of data in the BI solution does not guarantee a possibility of carrying out researches necessary for the user at all. For this reason the flexibility became the most priority selection term of a system of a business intelligence for us. From all considered solutions Goodwin, optimal for tasks, and "Pure materials" there was a QlikView platform. Its associative technology, i.e. the coherence of all data allowing to carry out the business analysis on any, but not in advance thought over scheme and also an opportunity to see all data in a context", Ekaterina Rudakova, the Chief information officer, Goodwin and Chistye materials became main advantage of QlikView when choosing BI.

Project Implementation
"At QlikView system implementation we acted step by step, starting with the most critical for us tasks. The first stage of the project is decided to be carried out jointly with specialists of ATK consulting group, and then to develop a system independently. For us it was important to begin an implementation project together with the experienced partner having competences on implementation of QlikView of retail trade. The command of ATK consulting group gave us the correct vector of development in application development of QlikView on the basis of which we move when updating a complex of the analytical reporting of group", Ekaterina Rudakova, the Chief information officer, Goodwin and Chistye tells materials.
Specialists of ATK consulting group developed for category managers the application according to the analysis of sales and a remaining balance. Then, specialists Goodwin independently created two more applications for analytics on the CRM and ServiceDesk business areas. Initially the solution on the basis of QlikView was developed for retail chain stores of Goodwin. After trial operation of a system the solution was successfully replicated on Pure Materials network.

During the project on implementation of QlikView three main sources - the Gestori Pro trading system, the previous OLAP system and Service Desk-solution were integrated into an analytical system. "Very much impressed a compression engine of data in QlikView - total amount of data in sources at us reaches 150 GB, at the same time amount of data in the QlikView application is only 4 GB. Such high compression ratio of data for in-memory of a system allows to develop QlikView on the server with very reasonable amount of RAM, even taking into account active growth of the database of our networks and expansion of number of users in the company", Igor Burobin, the leading developer, Goodwin and Chistye comments on materials.
Results
"With QlikView decision making process changed – a system provides us fresh analytical data daily, in the user-friendliest form. It is qualitatively new level of efficiency thanks to which we not only more surely accept business solutions, but also expanded the horizons of tactical planning. The way of achievement of strategic objectives of the company became clearer", Alexey Rappo, the CEO, Goodwin and Chistye materials.
According to the companies Goodwin and Chistye Materialy, thanks to implementation of QlikView the following results were achieved:
• time of reply to the request of the user was reduced by 70%,
• the term of development of reports was reduced by 80%
• The detail level of analytical information grew by 60%.
• IT costs not only did not grow, but also decreased by 50%.
"To us as IT directorates, the speed and convenience of development of new reports are important. After QlikView implementation time of development was reduced from several days till several o'clock. Actually, QlikView the first system in which, having near at hand documentation, it is possible to create full analytical applications in two-three days of training. As for our business users, they in QlikView appreciate convenience of using, the high level of data visualization and that was not in other systems, - a possibility of carrying out a research that is called "without leaving" QlikView", Ekaterina Rudakova, the Chief information officer, Goodwin and Chistye materials.
Prospects
As the staff of TD Goodwin and TD Pure Materials expands the requirements to analytical data, QlikView develops the increasing rates. In the closest plans of the companies – to expand use of analytics of QlikView. "For directors of shops, senior managers and merchandisers the application according to the analysis of checks with a possibility of drill-down before transaction, the analysis of joint purchases and the plan-fact analysis will be developed. Besides, we are going to develop the application for directorate on personnel including personnel recruitment efficiency analysis, the analysis of employee databases (potential, this and being). When in hands there is such powerful and flexible tool as QlikView, the fresh business ideas not only begin to soar in air, but also quickly are implemented for the benefit of the company. We like to work with QlikView – to users and developers the system of analytics it is difficult to provide more friendly", - Ekaterina Rudakova, the Chief information officer, Goodwin and Chistye materials.