Digia has helped LUSH to increase at times the speed of the production order, as well as find new ways to increase sales through the implementation of Digia Retail Analytics BI-solution.
The “Lush Russia” company is the exclusive representative of Lush brand in Russia. Lush sells bath bombs, solid shampoos, massage bars, and other handmade products made from natural ingredients, essential oils, extracts of herbs, flowers and fresh fruit.
The full range of products for its stores "Lush Russia" orders directly from head office located in the UK. Orders are processed weekly, based on the previous periods results and forecasted sales for each outlet.
The accounting system used at the “Lush Russia” office did not allow automatic analysis of all the necessary data and generating weekly orders to meet the requirements of particular shops, a lot of time was spent on manual editing and data analysis.
“Lush Russia” company needed more effective tools for analysts and decision support that could reduce the time of goods orders formation, as well as help to find the new "growth points" - ways to increase profits of the trading network.
“Lush Russia” management decided to choose Digia Retail Analytics – the solution which is specially created for retailers and successfully implemented in dozens of Russian trading companies already. Digia Retail Analytics uses advanced Microsoft Business Intelligence tools in order to solve retailers’ tasks in a fast and effective manner.
During the project Digia BI-experts created the unified data warehouse, which combines data from the customer's accounting systems. That allowed expanding analytical capabilities, simplifying access to the necessary information and improving data quality. OLAP cubes accelerated receipt and analysis of data on sales in various aspects such as storage performance, sales figures up to check, ABC-analysis of the various product groups, etc.
The basis of Digia Retail Analytics is Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, which contains powerful business intelligence tools. SQL Server is the most popular platform for data warehousing, OLAP, and reporting. Using the tools of MS BI, included in MS SQL Server 2008 R2, “Lush Russia” company is able to analyze large amounts of data at lightning speed, using a convenient and familiar interface of Microsoft Office applications and a powerful functional of various filters configuration.
Thus Digia created the solution by means of which any Lush employee can form the necessary report on sales, warehouses remains, and remains in the way, in the context of net cost, sales price, quantity and other parameters.
The most important stage of the project was the ADR (Automatic Delivery Rewards) module developing. Taking advantage of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, Excel, and specially designed macros ADR automatically generates an order to supply products for all “Lush Russia” outlets. Herewith the solution takes into account the sales data of previous periods, the requirements for minimum balances in the warehouses, the special requirements of individual shops, and other information in the real-time mode.
In this real-time data on sales accounted for prior periods, the requirements for minimum balances in the warehouses, the special requirements of separate shops, and other information.
As a result of the project “Lush Russia” has a powerful and convenient analytical tool that significantly accelerates operating activities and made it possible to carry out a deep and comprehensive business analysis. Automation of routine operations, improving of data quality and new analytical tools provide employees the opportunity to spend more time on complex analysis of activities and finding ways to further business development.
“Lush Russia” plans to use Microsoft Business Intelligence tools more actively, carry out more in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the data, on which they expect to further optimize the processes of inventory control, logistics and sales.