Matalan goes for business intelligence

Matalan, the UK clothing and homeware retailer, has adopted new business intelligence (BI) software to increase the accuracy and speed of access to key sales data.

The company said it is benefiting from visibility of the previous weekend's trading figures by the following Monday morning through the new BI platform, which integrates data on 466 million transactions per year held in disparate systems.

In so doing, Matalan has deployed SAS' Enterprise Intelligence software to improve data quality and the timeliness of key trading information from its 190-plus stores, enabling the business with faster and more accurate decision making capabilities relating to increased efficiencies, reduced waste and margin management.

Pete Trainer, Matalan IT and logistics director, stated: "Matalan's aim is to become a fact-based, data-driven organisation and SAS has helped us toward meeting this objective."

Matalan had previously been unable to gain a more immediate view of trading patterns because paper-based reports were produced and then analysed through manually intensive processes that took up too much of its merchandisers' time.

New insight will enable the business to order stock for each store that accurately reflects customers' buying behaviour, so reducing stock wastage, markdowns and margin erosion.

The retailer is using its BI investment as a platform for data integration, analysis and reporting. It is working with Capgemini as its consulting and implementation partner towards an electronic traffic-light reporting system covering store performance metrics and stock details, including size and colour. This will provide detailed insight into the stores sales patterns enabling a more immediate response to trading performance and conditions.

Trainer added: "[Having] one version of the truth gives us the ability to optimally plan, execute on that plan and react quickly to changing conditions. Bringing all our data together means that we now have a platform to build upon for future developments in the areas of merchandise planning, supply chain management and marketing outreach."

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