The Warehouse Group, New Zealand’s largest listed retailer, has implemented QlikView to improve performance and derive business value from its 80 million plus data records.

QlikView analyses sales and customer conversion trends store by store, and Kevin Rowland, business information manager of The Warehouse Group, says the company is gaining new insights.

“Overall, QlikView helps management to understand performance and where we can do better. Retail is a highly competitive business and store managers like to see how they are faring compared to, say, a neighbouring store,” Rowland said.

The Warehouse Group is using QlikView to combine data coming in from individual store counters with hourly transaction information from the point of sale systems.

Using the reports generated, regional and sales managers are able to analyse conversion trends to see where attention is needed.

QlikView is also being used for click and collect analysis in order to track stock movements and collections in one central hub.

Group and board level reports are being used to show performance by brand and channel, collating data from The Warehouse Group’s companies from Teradata, Oracle and other SQL Server data warehouses.

“Conversion analysis visualisation was perhaps the most outstanding benefit of QlikView and helps pinpoint performance store by store,” Rowland said.

Sharryn Millican, VP and  regional director of Qlik Australia and NZ,  said that data is a very powerful tool – but only if it can be understood and is accessible to the right parties.

“The Warehouse Group has taken analytics out of the back office of IT and has brought it directly onto the store floor. As a result, their team members can immediately evaluate what is going on within their stores and take proactive actions to improve performance and operations.”