Leading South African retailer, New Clicks, together with official Business Objects partner, Bytes Business Solutions, has embarked on an ambitious BI (business intelligence) project to efficiently track, understand and manage business through information delivery mechanisms.
The project will ultimately benefit New Clicks` internal users at its Cape Town head office and regional offices in Johannesburg and Durban.
"What we really hope to achieve is to exploit our data in the best possible fashion - getting the most from the information that resides in our stores, merchandising and New Clicks ClubCard systems," comments Alan Marais, data warehouse manager at New Clicks.
Although only in its first phase, the New Clicks IT team has already been able to roll-out Business Objects` capabilities to all levels of the organisation (approximately 150 users) that include the marketing team and decision-makers.
"The ease of data access enables swift decision-making and allows New Clicks to for example monitor the progress of their promotions and campaigns, and subsequent feedback," comments David Maron, account manager at Bytes Business Solutions.
"Following the success of last year`s roll-out, we soon realised that there`s a definite need for large-scale BI project at New Clicks," he adds.
This project follows an extensive pilot phase during 2002, which proved to be very successful.
Apart from providing New Clicks with Business Object solutions, Bytes Business Solutions trained the IT team and also played a key consulting role during pre-deployment.
"We`re very happy with Bytes, they`ve walked that extra mile, giving us value-add and expert service on Business Objects," says Marais.
New Clicks opted for Business Objects` Web Intelligence, Broadcast Agent and BI developer suite. Broadcast Agent, for example, delivers business-driven alerts and mission-critical information to New Clicks` multiple users, while Web Intelligence enables timely access to internal reports and other important information.
"Business Objects integrates seamlessly with our current IT systems, which made it the obvious choice," comments Marais.
New Clicks` BI strategy provides for the continuous upgrade of systems, depending on business demands. Concludes Maron: "New Clicks is a textbook case of a successful BI implementation - there`s buy-in from the top of the organisation right through to end general users."
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