LeFutur (IBM Cognos Business Intelligence)

In the conditions of the permanent growth of number of clients, development of their requirements and preferences, many retail chain stores feel need for continual improvement of tools of the analysis of consumer behavior on purpose without delay to react to change of product, financial and economic policy. Without the balanced approach to the analysis of operating activities of retail chain stores detailed reliable planning and acceptance of timely management decisions is impossible.

The experience of implementation of these tools in LeFutur company implemented by Microtest company is an indicative example of successful use of opportunities of information and analytical systems.

Project Task

Expanding retail chain stores and also uniqueness of the offered range of goods management of UBC management company (manages Shop of Surprising Things LeFutur network and House of Gifts of Bagatelle network) realized the growing need for improvement of management processes and decision makings and increase in transparency of activity. Achievement of these is more whole the management saw in implementation of an analytical system. Project implementation the company entrusted Microtest, to the only partner of Cognos in Russia having in the portfolio a number of specialized industry solutions based on Cognos Business Intelligence.

Feature of the project was consolidation of old and new historical data with the purpose of more detailed analysis of activity of the company and consumer demand forecasting.

Solution

During the project in LeFutur network the functionality of industry solution Microtest for retail containing specific analytical models of sales, purchases, remaining balance and the movement of goods, marketing efforts was implemented. The analytical solution Cognos represents a set of analytical models (OLAP cubes) designed in the module PowerPlay Transformer. Each model contains information from separate data domain:

• Sales
• Stock balance
• Purchases

System implementation began with the fact that the team of key users of LeFutur and the administrator of an analytical system was created and trained. Within the first week of the project the staff of the company mastered the main functionality of the products PowerPlay and Impromptu and also created the first analytical models. Further, within several weeks, the reports received on the basis of the multidimensional PowerPlay models were tested and compared to results of accomplishment of the available SQL queries.

During the project users learned to receive reports necessary for them without the assistance of technical specialists. Using possibilities of multidimensional data analysis specialists of LeFutur carry out the analysis of assortment matrixes, providing information in the form of analytical cuts in usual business terms. Carrying out data analysis in the Cognos system allowed users of LeFutur company at any time and in any day of the week to obtain necessary information with guaranteed high speed.

Among information cuts on which the analysis, not only assortment, temporary, geographical indicators, but also such as allows users to pass the decision: sales volume per square meter, a ratio between the average amount of purchase of days off and weekdays, participation in a marketing action, the average level of profitability of the sales of goods bought on the discount card. In total more than 60 key indicators of business in 100 analytical cuts. The solution was developed by Microtest company on the basis of ten years' experience of projects implementation on Cognos system implementation in the Russian retail companies.

The achieved result

The possibility of the online-analysis of corporate information for acceptance of the management decisions connected with increase in efficiency of financial and economic activity of the company became the main result of implementation of a BI system in LeFutur network. More than by 50 times the set-up time of reports and decision making was reduced. At the same time maintaining the analysis in necessary analytical cuts is possible without mediation of specialists in information technology field. Premises for optimization of warehouse stocks of goods, increases in turnover, sale of excesses taking into account the seasonal demand and their distribution are created. Forecast accuracy of sales increased that led to more rational use of human and financial resources. The department of marketing had an opportunity to control efficiency of holding marketing actions.

Interactivity of reports and visual means of Cognos BI allow all key heads and analysts to reveal quickly any changes and to react to them, whether it be the order of an additional batch of a "top" position or a delay in delivery of goods.