Enterprise Data Analytics

Timely, Actionable Data Makes This Retailer Nimble and Competitive.

The Problem

A 50-location auto parts retailer lacked the timely, actionable data needed to make informed decisions about inventory allocation and purchasing. Every week, two home office employees manually extracted data from each location’s database, then aggregated it in Microsoft Excel for analysis by various departments. By the time this labor-intensive process was done, the data was 7+ days old and in a format that didn’t support nimble, data-based decision-making.

With no visibility into purchasing needs on an enterprise level, each location was buying from suppliers independently—so the company missed out on volume discounts. With no visibility into enterprise-wide inventory levels, there was no opportunity to reallocate products to other locations—so the company lost sales. And with no common set of key performance metrics (KPIs), it was nearly impossible to assess store performance consistently across the enterprise.

The Solution

• Efficient
• Timely
• Insightful

Compello Partners transformed this retailer’s data aggregation and analysis process by developing a data warehouse solution that leverages Microsoft Azure and Power BI. Instead of spending $300,000 a year in salaried resources requesting and merging data from multiple systems, the data warehouse uses scripts and algorithms to automatically collect it, normalize it, and turn it into data dashboards that provide actionable information.

Now the management team and other decision-makers can access real-time, dynamic, easy-to-understand data visualizations from their desktop or mobile device. The data warehouse provides them with access to 35+ data views, including financial reports like (Balance Sheet, Income Statement, P&L, GL Transaction Report) and operational reports like (Inventory by Stores, Sales by Stores). They’re able to look at data at the enterprise level or drill down to the location or individual transaction level, gaining insights on sales, inventory, and customer behavior. And they can easily create their ad hoc reports, thanks to the training provided by Compello Partners.

The Results

With timely financial and operational data and insights at its fingertips, this retail chain’s management team can make faster decisions that drive better results.

• Identify on-hand inventory and reallocate it to capture more sales
• Coordinate purchasing across the enterprise to earn volume discounts
• Evaluate store performance based on consistent KPIs
• Free up considerable FTE salary to focus on more productive work

“For 10 years, I thought I knew my business. The insights I’ve gotten from our data project in just a short time have uncovered operations and costs efficiencies that I had no visibility into before.”  CFO, Auto parts retailer