Customer Story

Large Liquor Retailer Boosts Sales and Forecasts Trends with BI Solution

What we did

  • Built an automated data and analytics solution in Qlik that replaced their manual Excel-based reporting
  • Reports show product line performance, customer buying habits, and online vs. in-store purchases
  • With a solution, the company can do accurate forecasting in local markets

Industry

  • Retail

Technologies

  • Qlik
“Analytics8 was extremely helpful and responsive. We had spent hours building excel spreadsheets and running cumbersome queries to manually run the data, but Analytics8 was able to automate the process so now our time is spent analyzing and using the data instead of preparing and running the data.”

Director of Finance

Business Need

A large liquor retailer wanted to harness their data and analytics to improve sales, customize marketing offers and promotions, and retain customers. Their analytics solution was outdated, contained unused data and dashboards, and only provided high-level Sales and Margin information. To understand how different business units were performing (Beer vs Wine vs Spirits sales), analysts were manually exporting data from NetSuite and Excel, and there was no uniform approach to analysis across business units. The process was time-consuming, prone to errors, and did not provide the insight they needed to proactively grow their business.

Solution

We started by conducting strategic planning sessions to fully understand their reporting and analysis needs. Once we understood their requirements, we built an automated data and analytics solution in Qlik that replaced their manual Excel-based reporting with a standardized set of reports across the business. Reports include:

  • Product line performance – beer, wine, and spirit sales, with the ability to drill down into local markets
  • Customer buying habits – history of purchases
  • Online sales – details about online sales, with the ability to track shipping
  • Inventory details – allowed the company to improve visibility into inventory details – determine accurate inventory ratio and fastest/slowest moving products, avoid out of stocks, and better manage inventory levels
  • Sales – easily track top and bottom sellers

These reports allowed them to see how individual products were performing, as well as the ability to forecast trends in the local market pertaining to the selection and availability of products. With our solution, the business will be able to perform assortment and inventory planning more accurately and detail than before.

Result

This company moved from manual, error prone Excel reporting to intelligently tracking business performance in a uniform manner. They have quick access to sales numbers and can easily see which product mixes perform the best in each market, including online. With a clearer picture of customer profiles and buying habits, this company can more effectively target their marketing and offer the most appealing products to their customers.

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