Digia Retail Analytics Increases Sales in “MAN” Supermarkets

Saint-Petersburg, Russia, September 15, 2012 --(PR.com)-- Digia RUS finished the project of Digia Retail Analytics implementation for Russian retail chain “MAN” located in Volgograd, Russia. This BI-solution based on Microsoft Business Intelligence platform was implemented in just 3 months. Managers of "MAN" supermarkets are planning to receive appreciable financial results promptly.

"MAN" Trading Company is a popular retail chain in the Volgograd region of Russia. The company is represented by more than 50 stores in various formats, from hypermarkets to small convenience stores, with a staff of more than 3,000 people.

The main aims of Business Intelligence solution implementation is to reduce the time spent on reports, extends of company’s capacity of sales analysis while searching for ways to optimize the assortment and means to attract and retain customers.

Digia Retail Analytics industry BI-solution is designed to consolidate the data from a company's accounting system and other data sources, and to provide a comfortable interactive reporting. “MAN” uses Microsoft Dynamics AX as a main IT-system and Crystal front office solution to store sales data. In addition, earlier the company used in-house developed front office software; the data from this system is also periodically used to create reports and to plan future retailer’s activities. Digia Retail Analytics solution integrated all of these data through the ready-made connectors for popular accounting systems and the fine-tune procedure of integration with different in-house developed systems similar to the one used by the customer.

The project of Digia Retail Analytics implementation lasted only three months. During that time, Digia experts integrated solutions with all data sources, set up necessary reporting and trained the users to operate with the system. The main analytical models used by “MAN” trading chain are "Sales and Warehouse," "ABC analysis" and "Receipts", that could provide rich opportunities for detailed analysis of information on sales up to the receipt, stock movements and indicators of the assortment’s structure.

Alexander Slavgorodsky, CIO of "MAN" Trading Company, says: “We used to spend about a week to create monthly report before the Digia project. Now, data is uploaded every day automatically, and the process of reports preparation has speeded up in several times."

Digia Retail Analytics solution helped to solve the vital issue of creating the highly sought reporting for the long time periods. Now, the company has the opportunity to generate reports on current sales volume easily, analyse the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, make ABC analysis of receipts, and explore data in different contexts at the appropriate time. "Now all necessary reports are generated in a matter of minutes instead of hours or even tens of hours in the past", says Alexander Slavgorodsky. "In addition, usability of the Digia Retail Analytics is a great advantage for us: analysts can create and modify the reports themselves without the involvement of programmers. Now, they get any, even very unusual, self-reports, without spending time on explaining their demands and expectations to programmers and waiting for any slightest change. The solution attracts a large number of pre-configured reports, which don’t require a lot of customer work, as well as ease of making changes to the reports. Now, the employees of our stores operate with the system themselves, quickly getting the information they need at the moment."

Also, Digia Retail Analytics helped to resolve some issues with financial statements. Using the capabilities of Microsoft Business Intelligence "MAN" was able to significantly reduce the time of financial reporting for payroll and management accounting.