CASE STUDY | RETAIL | DATA & ANALYTICS
Decision Inc. Australia puts ASICS on the front foot with advanced reporting and planning
Solution Overview
Industry
Retail
Solution
Sales Dashboard & Reporting
Technology
Qlik Sense
Location
Australia
Client
ASICS Oceania
Requirement
The team at ASICS had been working with Decision Inc. Australia for over 10 years and reached out to the data and analytics consultancy to see if there was a solution that would improve their planning capability.
The global footwear and apparel retailer wanted to improve the accuracy of its forward planning and increase its visibility into its own performance
About The Client
ASICS is a brand synonymous with elite performance. The leading running shoe brand for enthusiasts and professionals alike, the global footwear and apparel retailer is the first choice for track and field athletes across the globe.
But like every athlete they work with, they identified areas to improve. ASICS is a high-performance business, and the Australian business wanted to sharpen its internal processes. It needed a data and analytics coach to train them up and provide the right equipment to succeed.
The Challenge
ASICS’s category planning team was challenged with getting access to data in a timely manner to make key decisions for current and future seasons and review the performance of previous seasons. The data was there, but access to it was often hindered by a need to use manual processes to cross-reference and compare. At the same time, it was having issues with the time it took to plan for the next season, as the accuracy of predictions was based on assumptions rather than actionable data.
“It’s impossible for many organisations to plan ahead when data is siloed in various applications or excel spreadsheets, because rarely do these data conflate into one single source of actionable truth. Furthermore, when data is isolated like this it’s often used to inform how a business has performed, rather than providing insights that can help it forecast ahead and improve performance.”
– Tony Butler , Managing Director, Decision Inc. Australia
The team at ASICS had been working with Decision Inc. Australia for over 10 years and reached out to the data and analytics consultancy to see if there was a solution that would improve their planning capability.
The Solution
Decision Inc. worked closely with Michael Masulans, General Manager for ASICS Oceana to centralise critical data sources from their ERP, POS, and Warehouse management systems to build unified analytics platform for which the entire organisation to delivery their reporting needs.
As well as consolidate all Sales, Budget, Open Orders, Delivery, and Inventory data with the Planning team’s Range, Promotion and Merch plans. The solution provided the team with a single dashboard, that automated all reporting and allowed them to glean insights from the sudden plethora of data, and finally a visualisation platform to easily make sense of the gained insights
The new dashboard included the implementation of Qlik Sense which would centralise all of the company’s data into one single platform. Qlik has the additional benefit of ensuring all data funnelled into it would interoperate, ensuring that it could be easily accessed and analysed regardless of its format
The design of the customised dashboard helped ASICS visualise its data quickly and meaningfully, allowing it to create visualisation that helped it understand the data for more accurate forecasting and planning.
“It’s one thing to ensure you can access all your data quickly, but the power of data can only be realised once it’s analysed and visualised,” said Butler. “Not everyone is a data engineer, so it was imperative that we make the data accessible to everyone involved in sales and operational planning at ASICS.”
The Outcome
ASICS now uses Qlik to develop dashboards for their Sales, Category & Planning, Supply Chain, Retail and warehouse operations teams. The platform allows each BU/Function to take actions based on timely data and insights, streamlining decision-making and increasing visibility over its operational data.
“Qlik provides us with a single analytics platform which centralises our analytics and makes it accessible for everyone in the business.”
– Michael Masulans, General Manager, ASICS Oceania
The solution has since been adopted by the Retail arm of the business. According to Masulans, the solution acts as a “one-stop shop” that provides the retail team with a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly overview, as well as a previous year comparison.
“It’s been a great tool that is able to be used by managers, ASMs and our regionals, providing great insight into the business.” said Masulans. “The biggest benefit is the that it provides one source of truth that is accessible to the relevant management team. We use this daily and have been able to make some really smart analysis of the stores.
The retail, sales and planning teams are now able to accurately forecast for seasons ahead, no longer relying on assumptions. The planning team can now plan more efficiently, while the sales team have a clearer visibility of sales data to date, and retail have insights into hourly performance of the business with forecasted sales. Some additional benefits were unquantifiable but no less felt across the organisation.” according to Masulans.
“It’s allowed us to lead with greater insight, and we can now coach solutions through to the right answer required for questions asked of the team from the wider business, and even within their departments.” he said. “It’s helped us solve difficult challenges that, previously, internal staff couldn’t solve as they just didn’t have access to the right information quickly enough. Now we can access it quickly, easily and in a format that anyone can understand, regardless of the data or the challenge we’re looking to solve.”
ABOUT DECISION INC.
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