Arcadia Group
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- Europe
Country
- United Kingdom
Product
- WebFOCUS
Tech Stack
- IBM iSeries
- IBM DB2 Enterprise data warehouse
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Applicable Industries
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Arcadia Group Ltd. is the UK's largest clothing retailer, with more than 2,000 branches throughout the country. The company reaches customers through eight brands in the UK and a growing number of international stores. Arcadia's eight celebrated brands include Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Outfit, Topshop, Topman, and Wallis. The retail industry today is ferociously competitive with consumer loyalty no longer guaranteed as it once was. To meet this new environment, retailers are seeking new ways to find a competitive edge. One of the most critical is the ability to access and analyze accurate, consistent, and timely information. Arcadia recognized this need, and in the late 1990s, embarked on a major data warehouse project with IBM to centralize information for its international, group finance, and branch merchandising teams, which would allow better access to data and enable more informed decision-making.
The Challenge
Arcadia Group, the UK's largest clothing retailer, recognized the need for a robust business intelligence platform to improve decision-making and business performance. The retail industry has become fiercely competitive, and consumer loyalty is no longer guaranteed. To gain a competitive edge, Arcadia sought to access and analyze accurate, consistent, and timely information. In the late 1990s, Arcadia embarked on a major data warehouse project with IBM to centralize information for its international, group finance, and branch merchandising teams. By 2005, Arcadia had created a robust, well-structured data warehouse for its central operations, supplemented by a business intelligence (BI) tool providing reports to around 200 users. However, Arcadia recognized the need to extend the solution across the enterprise to include the buyers and merchandisers of its eight trading brands. These teams were using legacy applications, which had become inflexible and restrictive in Arcadia’s international strategy, such as lacking multi-channel access or multi-currency functionality.
The Solution
Arcadia wanted to extend its business intelligence solution from its current user base of just 200 to nearly 1,000. It also knew that it would in the future look to roll out the solution to all branch stores (currently more than 2,000 in the UK), resulting in a solution that would be accessible to over 5,000 users. After evaluating suppliers, Arcadia selected Information Builders WebFOCUS because of its strong architecture, ease of deployment, and cost-effectiveness. Arcadia also liked WebFOCUS’ close integration with the IBM iSeries and the look and feel of the solution from an end user perspective. Finally, and most importantly for the company, was Information Builders’ proven ability to scale its solutions in the largest environments, which Arcadia recognized as vital to ensuring the organization embraced business intelligence. With its previous business intelligence system, Arcadia had created more than 1,000 system and end user-built reports. This was becoming overly complex and after a review of all reports, Arcadia used WebFOCUS to rationalize the number of reports down to 100 key management reports that covered all business requirements. In addition, through the solution’s flexibility, end users could create their own reports based on parameters set by the IT team within WebFOCUS.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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