The business situation of our client

In retail, the analysis of receipts can be a source for a variety of business improvements. However, not all receipt data analysis is the same, as the example of one of our clients shows. The large retail group was already using cash register data as a decision support tool. But only historical evaluations could be made on aggregated data. Ad-hoc analyses were also hardly possible. Accordingly, the potential of the extensive available data was at best only rudimentarily unlocked.

This situation was mainly due to the fact that each department was working on its own systems with too little performance and its own, very limited data pool. Therefore, our most important step was to consolidate all data with maximum detail in a modern enterprise Data Warehouse (DWH) to network it and make it available company-wide.

The solution for our client

In the central enterprise DWH, we have combined the historical cash register data of the past three years. In total, this involves over 100 billion receipt lines or 30 TB of data. The enormous amounts of data as well as the complex requirements of a detailed receipt data analysis require a high-performance data model as well as modern, powerful technologies. In addition to our many years of experience, Microsoft products have provided us with the best services here, as usual.

The new solution offers our customer high data quality, great transparency of sources as well as very efficient data processing. For example, data for ad-hoc analyses can be retrieved within a few seconds. The data is processed intelligently – i.e. even different formats can be read out uniformly in one processing step. These processes are automated.

How data turns into new values

Our customer can now analyse every receipt down to the level of individual items. This benefits very different areas of the company, such as:

Controlling

• Ad-hoc analyses with all relevant key figures and dimensions
• Comparison of branches and regions as well as products and product groups
• Data can be used as a reliable basis for important decisions

Marketing

• Data on baseline sales per day, shop and article, as well as on the take-up effects of promotional merchandise
• Model for advertising success control optimises marketing expenses
• Integrated inventory management for supplementary evaluation of seasonal items and discount promotions
• Customised offers and discounts for customers
• Purchasing
• Determination of the best price in relation to sales increases turnover and profits
• Evaluation of autodisposition optimises shelf utilisation and capital commitment

Revision

• Irregularities are automatically displayed or detected

turn your data into value.