Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- WebFOCUS
- WebFOCUS Maintain
- WebFOCUS InfoAssist
- WebFOCUS Active Technology
- WebFOCUS Connector for Microsoft Excel
Tech Stack
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Microsoft Active Server pages
- HTML
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Digital Expertise
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Predictive Quality Analytics
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Niemann Foods Inc. is a regional retail store operator with approximately 100 stores in Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri. The company owns and operates Pet Supplies Plus, and Sav-a-Lot stores, mostly under the County Market and Cub Foods banners. The employee-owned, family-run company was founded in 1917 and currently employs 4,000 people. Niemann is battling for market share in the Midwest with a number of national and regional retail operators in the region. With $650 million in annual sales, Niemann’s goal is to be a $1 billion company. This aggressive growth strategy drove the company’s senior managers to purchase Information Builders WebFOCUS, a business intelligence (BI) and analytics environment that delivers vital information to people at every level of the organization.
The Challenge
Niemann Foods Inc., a regional retail store operator with approximately 100 stores in Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, was battling for market share in the Midwest with a number of national and regional retail operators. With $650 million in annual sales, Niemann’s goal was to be a $1 billion company. This aggressive growth strategy drove the company’s senior managers to purchase Information Builders WebFOCUS, a business intelligence (BI) and analytics environment that delivers vital information to people at every level of the organization. The company was looking to develop an operational reporting environment that tracks sales activity, gross profits, and the movement of products. The retailer’s pervasive vision for end-user reporting entrusts business users with manipulating data, rather than requiring the IT department to continually develop reports in response to each request.
The Solution
Niemann Foods selected WebFOCUS as its new enterprise reporting and BI platform. The IT team also liked WebFOCUS Maintain, which enables them to create closed-loop BI applications in which people can both retrieve and update operational data. They believed this type of BI application would be the simplest and most efficient way to give store managers control over the relentless flow of information. Most of Niemann Food’s operational data is stored in a Microsoft SQL Server database. It serves a menu-based reporting system that lets users examine sales by company, community, store, and department. Every time somebody wants to run a report, the system generates a new query. The IT team is gradually shifting away from this older reporting system as it creates new reports with WebFOCUS. So far, the emphasis has been on monitoring sales and gross profits, but Schaffer sees the potential for much more.
Operational Impact
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