Adidas Russia (and network of Adidas brand stores) (MicroStrategy BI)

Creation of corporate DWH and system implementation of analytical data processing

S&T International announced project completion of creation of the corporate data warehouse and an analytical system in Adidas company – the Russian representative office of Adidas Group, the world leader of the industry of sports goods.

The scale of the project covers all branches and Adidas marketplaces in Russia that makes more than 700 objects. The solution implemented by the Russian division of S&T AG represents the BI platform automating information and analytical activity of the company and used for a research of business indicators and formation of the operational reporting. A system allows to carry out work with the consolidated information on the scale of the organization and to use it for optimization of acceptance of management decisions, business planning, control. A basis of the solution is the data warehouse working under control of the MS SQL SERVER of 2008. Access to storage is provided by means of the system of the corporate reporting.

S&T International has the long-term checked experience in the market of BI solutions and services, specializing in project implementation on creation of full-scale information and analytical systems of the corporate level and in the solution of private tasks. Activity of the centers of examination Business Intelligence in the field of Retail is directed to increase in efficiency of trade operations of customers, improvement of management of goods and supply chains, support and process optimization of decision making. Own implementation methodology and existence of a team of highly qualified specialists provide effective support of business processes of customers and the qualitative solution of assigned tasks.

Use of analytical tools becomes the urgent need for the companies. Without a debugged BI system it is impossible to build effectively processes, especially in large and geographically distributed business. About how the analytical MicroStrategy system helps to solve the whole pool of questions, the Intelligent Enterprise magazine was told by the senior specialist on the systems of the business analysis of Adidas company Sergey Komarichev.

Intelligent Enterprise: What basic functions are performed by the analytical MicroStrategy system in adidas?

Sergey Komarichev: As at Adidas company the huge retail network of own shops across all territory of the CIS functions, we were faced by a task to find the convenient tool for the analysis of sales, suitable for different categories of users — certainly, for top management of network, but also and for directors of shops, for different specialists of departments of a back office (in particular, forecasting of sales and purchases) and even for the divisions which are formally not entering into structure of our company.

A system allows all these employees to generate necessary reports, to trace interrelation (often not so and obvious) between sales of different goods and to draw the corresponding conclusions which result is acceptance of management decisions. Besides, based on sales informations in combination with information on preferences of buyers (which clarification is also included into function of a business intelligence), it is possible to draw, for example, conclusions and about need of development of some special policy for promotion of new type of goods. For the retail network trading in sports goods, this task can be especially uncommon. Here both products are often very technological, and the motivation of different buyers, even in case of acquisition of the same goods, can significantly differ.

What architecture of access in your case to information resources of an analytical system from different employees?

MicroStrategy has very powerful and convenient Web interface allowing to design different access patterns to data for personnel. Thanks to the same Web interface all shops can quickly spread reports in network. And those employees who should write reports thanks to powerful, convenient and intuitive tools of designing can configure necessary filters and in short terms to make the HTML-report for the current task. Similar to the staff of different departments of office who is engaged in forecasting, efficiency evaluation can obtain information in different cuts for studying and optimization of work in the directions supervised by them. In a word, reports in a system in fact are submitted by classical objects of collective work.

At the same time Web tools allow to change (even considerably) reports "under itself" that offers very rich prospects of improvement of a management activity. We have an opportunity to calculate a set of different interesting KPI and to analyze them, revealing including implicit patterns on sales on the basis of which development, for example, of new potentially more effective marketing actions is possible.

Certainly, all this will be hardly necessary for the normal employee of shop, however the functionality of a system allows to trace owing to what in this outlet in specific day sales "sank". Whether it is connected with lack of goods in the hall, with the fact that less potential buyers began to visit shop (data on it are in a system too) or the number of the people shopping decreased — the personnel which badly perform sales are responsible for a situation. Thanks to it the management (for example, the shop director) will be able to make more operational and high-quality management decisions. So conditionally speaking, he is always able to answer a question whether it is worth transforming the scheme of the calculation, to change the range or, say, to take these or those actions concerning personnel of shop.

In general the analytical tool was very demanded by heads of different level. According to our employees, now day of many shop directors begins with studying of reports in a BI system and decisions on that, properly to arrive with goods on shelves.

There are, as we know, mobile versions for the system used by you, and at the same time they very actively develop. As far as they are demanded in your business?

Really, all speak about mobile solutions already and everywhere — and many companies place emphasis on development of applications of this class. In MicroStrategy there is also convenient mobile version which functions are optimized under features of this or that gadget that gives the chance quickly to work with information actually in any place and to make decisions more quickly. So far we widely do not use these functions, but they are represented to us perspective.

Wide use of the Web interface, as well as mobile access, substantially pushes business to active actions in the field of centralization of infrastructure. How the situation in your company is?

As for infrastructure, all servers executing all calculations connected with operation of our analytical system are in one huge data center in Germany. The clients scattered worldwide via proxy servers and gateways obtain data from there. It submits already created reports. In fact from them only existence of the browser for loading of these data is required. The similar architecture is, in our opinion, at a present stage optimal.

In certain cases solutions of employees, responsible for process, can conflict to offers of an analytical system that, as we know, is quite widespread problem connected with operation of BI systems in practice. How, in your opinion, it is necessary to solve it?

Reports of a BI system, certainly, should not be perceived as the ultimate truth and the direct guide to action is rather recommendations (some kind of best practice) for shop, i.e. in fact a system acts as one of experts. The quality of its recommendations can be tested on quite simple examples characterizing, say, influence of seasonality on demand. Though recommendations can concern also such things as motivation of buyers on all gamma of the goods purchased by them for one visit to shop. But once again I will emphasize that the final solution of relative change of the range of goods and its layout is accepted anyway by the employee, responsible for these tasks. MicroStrategy only offers it different options of succession of events to which he can listen, and can ignore them.

Whether there is in your company a division which is engaged in forecasting and how its work is connected with MicroStrategy?

In our company there is business division which task is efficiency evaluation of work of shops and forecasting of sales and orders for them. Certainly, analysts of this department use data from our storage of analytical reports and turn on them in the calculations. However now their activity which is directly concerning drawing up and implementation of logic of forecasting, after all is substantially autonomous and is not connected with information processing algorithms which are implemented by the MicroStrategy system in our business.

For adoption of these or those solutions it is necessary to consider a huge number of factors which, apparently, have not a direct bearing on behavior of buyers, however indirectly very significantly can influence it. For example, rainy weather can lead to increase in sales of waterproof clothes. Whether are accepted in attention when forecasting similar factors?

Certainly, for high-quality forecasting it is necessary to use the maximum quantity of information which can be received not only from specialized bases, but also from open sources, for example, from the same weather forecast. We take weather, population of the cities, a relative positioning of shops, etc. into account. Certainly, the seasonality also affects sales.

In principle use of internal and external analytics mutually correlates. If we want to analyze and make in more detail better forecasts, information on weather conditions in this or that region, about a road situation, about a social and demographic situation, about the level of income of inhabitants, about age distribution and still a lot of things, many other can be required by us, say. Collecting data such, it is more deeply necessary to use, as a rule, functionality of an internal analytical system, and it in turn can cause the need for more detailed and various external information; as a result the cycle of improvement of collecting and data processing in fact is continuous. All set of the obtained internal and external information is quite capable to help (and really helps) to us to find out most accurately preferences of clients and to select customer groups on the basis of what it becomes simpler to offer goods both separately, and jointly.

Data of any BI system are demanded first of all by the management and analysts. Whether a system any indirect way has an impact on work of linear personnel (for example, workers of a trading floor)?

Yes, a system has an impact on work of linear personnel as in addition to efficiency analysis of sales using MicroStrategy we can estimate efficiency of employees, for example, during the working day. This assessment is based on a sales history, a profile of visit of shop by buyers and some other parameters. Proceeding from it the forecast according to which in the first half of day in a trading floor, say, four persons are required, in lunch time — seven, and is built in the one or three evenings. Thus we manage to create the balanced working schedule for all employees at which each of them will be able to implement the sales plan, and at the same time all buyers will also receive the corresponding service.

MicroStrategy, as we know, is the corporate standard of Adidas. In this sense it is interesting as far as methods of use of a system are universal worldwide. Whether a system in integration with globally applied products for an IT poderzhki of business functions, with locally used systems or at all it is autonomous? Whether results of its use in one region can affect work of other functional division in another?

Certainly, there is a pool of the general key performance indicators which are relevant for any country. This number of sales in a month, a median number of visitors in shop within an hour, the number of sales on the visitor, etc. Such KPI are interesting to employees in all countries, and they are uniformly analyzed in all regions of the world. According to it also the reporting prepared by means of a system and methods of its use has certain general properties.

At the same time, despite globalization and standardization, it is impossible to deny the huge structural differences characteristic of the markets in different regions. So we do not refuse also report types, unique for each region: they will be special for Europe, for Russia and the CIS countries and so on. These reports are a peculiar input parameter for formation of the purchase plan of the following collection, and somewhat they are just an indicator on which, say, the director of factory in China can quite make at least tactical plans of own activity, proceeding including from those data which are obtained based on sales in the Russian cities.

Concerning integration of an analytical system with other products first of all it is possible to tell that data source as which the ERP system acts (at a present stage in adidas — Microsoft Dynamix NV) is necessary for each analytical system. Without it, naturally, BI will not be able to function. Come to an analytical system also given from a management system for orders which was implemented by third-party developers. Besides, it is clear that many analytic functions will be used the more effectively, than the company locates a big arsenal of qualitative initial data. For retail it can quite be data on visitors which, as we know, are collected using the specialized systems.

Whether BI tools for customer relationship management are used? Specifically in retail it can be problems of planning of marketing actions and management of them that for retail chain stores of Adidas is represented especially relevant …

Certainly, we apply a BI system to marketing though for absolute efficiency analysis of marketing actions and the campaigns MicroStrategy it is not used. The specific efficiency of similar acts is estimated out of MicroStrategy — in the third-party firm performing this work for us.

In principle the functionality of an analytical system provides us selection on groups of goods which well are on sale together then these groups are analyzed. So we will allow, we have information that during a certain season slates well are on sale together with bathing suits, and sneakers — together with soccerballs. From this, in turn, we can draw some conclusions.

BI tools are used, for example, to find out preferences of the buyer and to do to it purposeful and as now speak, targeted offers. In many respects it is connected with activities for programs of loyalty and according to personal questioning of our buyers. All this, naturally, is reflected on the way to information support of business. If specified in the questionnaire of people that he likes to play tennis, then we will turn on it in mailing about what we have actions on tennis clothes and footwear. It is necessary to tell what can quite supply with a certain information on client preferences and an analytical system — it is important only at least to be able to use the flexible reporting provided by it. Let's tell whether sports shoes in itself are on sale or surges in its sales correlate with the corresponding peaks relating to some pieces of sports equipment — such picture can give valuable information on the purposes of acquisition of footwear.

At the same time for problems of IT support of customer interaction now in the company the independent individual product is used. In the future the situation can quite change, and now, as far as I know, works on transition to a single platform and a single system on a global scale are conducted.