"Spar Kaliningrad" increased effective management of sales and the range using Qlik Sense

2021: Consolidation of information on sales with a current status of warehouses of shops and the distribution center

On February 9, 2021 Qlever Solutions, the Russian service provider in the field of work with data, announced end of the main development stage of the analytical solution for Spar Kaliningrad supermarket chain. The solution created on the Qlik Sense platform allowed network to manage sales and marginality in the shops.

Consolidation of information on sales with a current status of warehouses of shops and the distribution center became the purpose of the second stage.

The second stage of the project started in 2020. Consolidation of information on sales with a status of warehouses of the company was a problem of this stage.

Implementation of the second stage of the project in "SPAR Kaliningrad" was not limited to application development, the retail chain stores based on standard approaches in analytics. In the course of joint work in the developed applications nuances of processes of the customer and the specific needs for certain cuts of data were considered. It allowed to create the tool which is most "ground" under the customer's tasks and also to broaden horizons of specialists of Qlever Solutions in processes of retail and their "thin settings".

The second stage proceeded 4 months and included 650 working hours of a project team of Qlever Solutions. About 500 hours on development of additional functionality of the solution, need for which arose in process of application development and emergence of requirements to analytical tools.

As Wednesday for creation of analytical applications as during the first, and second stages, the Qlik Sense platform was applied. In total 8 analytical applications and about 50 auxiliary which provide layer-by-layer transformation of data were developed. For February, 2021 about 40 different specialists "SPAR Kaliningrad" use analytical applications - it is managers of commodity categories, analysts and heads of different level.

The architecture of the Qlik platform allows to use analytical applications literally from the first days of the project, without waiting for its termination — Alexander Volkov says, the head of technologies and analytics "SPAR Kaliningrad" — on the one hand, it saves money. But the most important as soon as the application is connected to real data, we see a way at once — where to move further how to develop the solution or what step to take in development of processes of the company. Quality and adjustedness of data, quick access to them and convenience of using in different cuts – undoubted plus of the implemented tool.

The project in SPAR began with implementation of standard tools and approaches to the analysis of sales based on information from checks — Andrey Harlak, the technical director of Qlever Solutions says — such analytics really helps to learn something about buyers and to find separate problems with the range. However, it is not enough. The analytics considers not only sales, but also and a warehouse, logistics, cost value. It turns it into the base for management of marginality, the range and pricing.

2019: Creation of the BI solution

Creation of the BI solution for "SPAR Kaliningrad" began in 2019 and consisted of two stages. At the first stage applications for the analysis of sales from data which contain in checks were developed.

The analytical applications developed at the first stage are used by data from cash desks for assessment of indicators, standard for retail, which help to see summary information on sales on all network and also sales pattern of different goods. Among such standard indicators — revenue, traffic, an average bill, the number of checks on hours and days of the week, distribution of sales by localities and shops.

Except deployment of the applications intended for the analysis of checks already at the first stage the architecture of extraction and transformation of data was created. At consolidation of data the mechanism of comparison of information from the different accounting systems and identification of possible errors was developed. It allowed to deploy already at the first stage of the project the solution for automatic quality improvement of data.

As a result of the first stage of the project specialists "SPAR Kaliningrad", responsible for the range and sales, in addition to the program MS Excel which in retail is traditionally applied to the analysis of sales received the tool for work with information — Qlik Sense deshborda. Such deshborda help to study the nomenclature how separate goods were on sale: estimate the frequency of sales, carry out ABC analysis, compare sales of goods among themselves in one category or learn about what goods are on sale together.

Besides, at the first stage the standard managerial reports for top managers reflecting key indicators of work of shops were developed.

The first stage of the project took two months and included about 350 working hours of a project team of Qlever Solutions. Low labor costs and high speed of application development are caused by the fact that at the first stage approaches to the analysis of sales, standard for retail, on the basis of data from checks were applied.