CASESTUDY 33
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE W
ith over 100 stores, EAT sells a range of food and drink items and prides itself on making its food fresh instore every day.
Relying on Excel to carry out any data analysis
meant EAT not only had to trawl through numerous spreadsheets to locate specifi c information, but its users had to download data from the system to share with teams. This was both time consuming and led to issues when different employees ended up working from various versions of the ‘latest’ information. Rene Batsford, head of IT at EAT, commented:
“We wanted a business intelligence solution that could provide us with the data we needed in a meaningful, rapid way, so that we could take action to any changes not only within the same day, but within the hour. This meant fi nding a system that, rather than being ‘up-to-date,’ was able to provide data right up to that very minute. After carrying out a review of the market, we found the QlikView Business Discovery platform perfect for our needs.” EAT has now undergone a company-wide
deployment of the the QlikView Business Discovery platform, with the tool being used across all functions of the business – from human resources (HR) to IT, fi nance and sales departments, inventory management and even in food production. Batsford continued: “It was important to us that everyone could use the tool, so that we could combine information from the different departments within the organisation. The deployment took two weeks and has already overhauled the way we’re using our information.”
QlikView is also being used to improve the
company’s sales performance through basket analysis. Using the platform’s in-memory search functionality, EAT is able to manipulate data right down to each individual purchase and, as such, can carry out analysis of items that are frequently bought together to make informed decisions on future product development and sales. “The ability to drill down through our data and see what each individual is buying in real time has been a massive help,” added Batsford. “We obviously want to maximise our sales as much as possible and doing this gives us intricate knowledge of the best product combinations. For example, we could fi nd out that a latte and croissant might be more
MAY/JUNE 2012 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
HELPS EAT DIGEST DATA EAT, one of London’s most successful High Street food retailers, has streamlined data analysis and decision-making processes with business intelligence software
profi table together than as standalone products and up-sell or position them instore accordingly.” As the majority of the products EAT sells only
have a one-day shelf life, the tool also helps the company to make important decisions regarding inventory, so they can see immediately where one store might require more of one product, while another rarely sells and would be more viable to be discontinued.
QlikView has also proven useful for ensuring that all stores are adequately manned. With its ability to show store performance right up to the minute, regional managers are able to see if any are particularly busy, yet short-staffed, and compare with any other outlets in the local area that may be overstaffed, yet selling slowly. Batsford explained: “We can take the information comparing levels of staff with sales for each different store and use it to reallocate our workers so that each EAT store is adequately manned to deal with the level of custom it is receiving. This means that we can both guarantee good customer service and drive maximum effi ciency from our employees at any given time.” QlikView has become so useful to EAT that the
company is also planning to equip its fi eld workers with Windows tablets to make sure they can all take advantage of the tool’s in-memory data storage. This will ensure they have access to the latest business information no matter where they are, to use data insight to truly make a difference to the business.
We wanted a business intelligence solution that could provide us with the data we
needed...so we could take action to any changes not only within the same day, but within the hour
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