Capitalizing on Inventory: Retail Operations

Client:
Manufacturer that maintains a network of its own retail stores

Business Challenges:
To obtain a more objective, up-to-date, and in-depth understanding of sales and inventory of the company’s products

To tighten control of inventory costs

Technology Challenge:
To move retail analysis reporting from a set of disconnected processes and systems to a single, web-enabled solution that integrates raw sales figures from remote retail stores and incorporates these technologies:
• SQL Server
• OS/2-based POS (point-of-sale) systems
• AS/400 dial-up connections
• IIS web server
• Internet Explorer web browser

Solution:
Creative Data built a web-enabled data warehouse solution that gives sales and marketing executives daily access to information about sales activity in the field. The system replaces and improves on a formerly paper-based process of customized reporting. The new flexible, robust capabilities deliver the right level of detail, so users can drill down and ‘slice & dice’ information to meet business objectives. Now, the company makes decisions based on the latest comprehensive picture of their retail operations.

Benefits:
Allows the company to:
• Stop running, managing, and maintaining a assortment of scheduled,
• inflexible, handcrafted reports
• Give users daily updates to retail sales figures for the first time
• Track inventory and minimize the need for overstocking
• Achieve great savings by reorganizing its stores’ inventory; now,
• stores can stock what sells, transfer stock among each other, and manage
• excess stock more easily

Based on the intelligence gained from the new solution, the company was able to set a new direction, expanding its network of retail stores to satisfy a greater number of consumers at a lower cost.

NEW!
Creative Data consultants capitalized on their work developing a well thought-out, clearly defined architecture, which was resilient enough to accommodate new functions. In just one week, they extended the solution with an interactive application that enables users at a web browser to explore and drill down into retail operations by multiple selectable fields -- by sales or returns; by dollars or units; by product, vendor, class, or store; and by timeframe (week, month, quarter, half-year, or year).

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