DiData`s SA-developed market intelligence system for Richemont`s European operations

One of the world`s leading luxury goods groups, Richemont, is using a sophisticated South African-developed market intelligence system in two European countries.

The Richemont Market Intelligence System (RMIS), developed by global technology services company Dimension Data in a deal worth approximately R4.7 million, accumulates marketing information for use in strategic decision-making.

Following the successful pilot project in Germany, the Richemont Group will roll-out the system in Italy in September.

The group, previously a holding company, consolidated its nine brands into one group 18 months ago. Dimension Data was asked to design and build a market intelligence system that sales representatives could use to gather information to enable managers to track the performance of the different brands, as well as see what the competitors were doing.

"It provides Richemont management, at all levels, with a single view of marketing information on the retail outlets of the various brands, and their main competition," says program manager Frans Roos for CommsCo South Africa, the Richemont Group`s IT division.

The nine Richemont Group`s brands that form part of the pilot are Cartier, Jaeger LeCoultre, Montblanc, Piaget, Panerai, Baume & Mercier, A Lange & Sohne, IWC and Vacheron Constantin.

Dimension Data was chosen to develop the custom system due to its knowledge of Richemont`s business as well as its existing strategic involvement with CommsCo.

"The RMIS is Web-based, enabling both online and offline operation," says Marius Beylefeld, project manager at Dimension Data. "It enables sales representatives to work offline while visiting stores, and then to replicate the data through a secure connection over the Internet to a central data store.

"This information, once replicated successfully, is then available globally through the Internet to be interrogated by RMIS users with the correct privileges to see the information. Extracting information from the system can be done through fixed format report or by running queries against the data."

The data captured includes demographics, brand sales, distributions of Richemont and competitor brands, promotional information with photographs, store layouts and competitor history, as well as information on account planning, training and sales visits.

"The tool can also be used to conduct surveys and to maintain a simple schedule," says Beylefeld.

The RMIS architecture was implemented on a Microsoft platform using Visual Basic, XML, ASP, COM, Biztalk, Microsoft SQL, message queuing, Crystal Reports and Macromedia Flash.