SACO Tunes Up Its BI Program With WebFOCUS

Hardware Chain Renovates With Real-Time Alerts and Information-Distribution Technology

The Saudi Company for Hardware (SACO) is a pioneer in the retail and wholesale hardware business in Saudi Arabia. Founded in 1985, the company is the largest total-solution home improvement superstore in the kingdom and an authorized dealer for Ace Hardware. SACO currently has 20 retail stores throughout Saudi Arabia and is aggressively expanding the number of stores within its retail chain, as well as the number of products available to customers.

Like many companies in the highly competitive retail space, SACO quickly found that rapid expansion led to a need for better and timelier information about such critical operations as inventory, sales, purchasing, and human resources. As CIO Raed Ayyoub put it, “We needed business intelligence to reveal breaks or bottlenecks at multiple points within our organization. We had plenty of data, but we had no way to process the data in a timely or cost-effective way to gain insight about strategic and operational issues.”

A highly successful proof of concept demonstrated how Information Builders’ WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) platform would empower SACO to tap into its information to achieve true operational efficiency and competitive advantage. To do this, the company chose WebFOCUS, as well as many of its value-added capabilities, such as dynamic report distribution and advanced data visualization.

Since implementing WebFOCUS, SACO’s management team has not only gained insight into their business metrics; they’ve started to automate key processes and workflows throughout the company – from managing inventory, pricing and product information changes to fine-tuning promotions, marketing campaigns, and merchandising strategies. This, in turn, has resulted in tremendous productivity gains, as well as a reduction in overhead. 

Selecting the Right Tools for the Job

When Mr. Ayyoub and his team went shopping for a new business intelligence solution, Information Builders’ WebFOCUS caught their eye.

“I was most impressed by the functionality of the reports, the automatic alerts, and the information-distribution capabilities of the WebFOCUS BI environment,” he says. “You don’t have to search for a problem hidden in the data. The software actively finds the problem and presents it right there in front of you.”

Mr. Ayyoub liked the idea of a BI system that not only delivered information, but could also trigger events when certain thresholds were reached, such as automatically replenishing inventory or notifying the CEO if sales dipped below a certain point. In his eyes, scheduling/distribution tools like WebFOCUS ReportCaster, in conjunction with the BI platform’s alerting functionality, would allow his organization to automate many fundamental analytic decisions, workflows, and approval processes.

“We can count on WebFOCUS to send us updates about stock levels, sales volume, and staffing needs so we can quickly identify and fix problems,” says Mr. Ayyoub. “That was what we wanted the future of business intelligence to be at SACO.”

Creating a Blueprint for Progress

After seeing a demo of the WebFOCUS platform using mocked-up information, Mr. Ayyoub sent a subset of his data to Information Builders so they could develop a proof of concept.

“The proof of concept was a pleasant surprise to me and the management team,” recalls Mr. Ayyoub. “We quickly realized we could gain a tremendous amount of value from the data we were already collecting. We didn’t need to add new data or build a data warehouse; we just had to make use of the data we already had.”

SACO took advantage of Information Builders’ on-site training and consulting services to get the maximum benefit out of the new software. Working with Information Builders Professional Services, SACO installed WebFOCUS on a Microsoft Windows server to access information from a Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) database and a homegrown enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Then, in a span of less than three weeks, the team created more than 50 reports  for purchasing, human resources, and other business domains. For example, one popular report analyzes customer traffic by week, day, and time of day to help department managers create staff schedules.  

“The consultants were fast, friendly, and efficient,” says Mr. Ayyoub. “We couldn’t have hit the ground running so fast without them.”

SACO used HTML Composer, part of WebFOCUS Developer Studio, to build composite reports with a variety of drilldown capabilities. Developers are also gaining proficiency with WebFOCUS Active Technologies, OLAP Reporting, and InfoAssist.

Building a Foundation for Real-Time Insight

Each of the SACO stores replicates data back to the home office at the end of each day when store managers close out the point-of-sale (POS) system. The data is immediately uploaded to a centralized Sybase ASE database at headquarters and is available for operational reporting.

Previously managers had to locate standard reports in the ERP system to review information sorted by vendor, product category, department, or customer; now WebFOCUS aggregates the information and presents parameterized reports through a unified dashboard. Authorized users can drill down into the specific information they need. If a user chooses to have the data presented by vendor, for instance, he or she can drill down all the way to the SKU number to identify individual products.

The flexibility of the WebFOCUS reporting environment has allowed SACO to replace dozens of reports from the ERP system with a handful of parameterized reports. Instead of keeping multiple windows open at once, now users can see information from multiple domains through one well-designed display. “Thanks to the flexible parameterization options built into the software, one WebFOCUS report can replace 10 existing reports,” says Mr. Ayyoub.

Best of all, employees don’t have to go looking for information. In many cases, the information finds them. The system alerts designated personnel when important thresholds are met. When the sales figures for a certain item drop below a certain amount, for instance, ReportCaster automatically sends a report to the buyer in charge of that item.

Visualizing Data in Productive Ways

SACO’s new dashboards use Adobe Flex charts to present the data in an engaging, interactive way. WebFOCUS Active Technologies consolidates multiple reports into a single, portable display that managers can view online or offline as they review daily, weekly, and monthly figures about sales and profitability. Being able to view the data in this fashion helps SACO plan for peak periods as they properly allocate staff and resources at various locations.

The ERP system generates lengthy end-of-the-month reports for 12 departments that reveal metrics such as the progress of sales, inventories received, margins, and monthly/yearly comparisons. Buyers used to spend days studying these reports to identify important facts and trends in the data. “You had to read it line by line,” says Mr. Ayyoub. “Tracking your progress from one month to another would require a lengthy analysis. Now, we offer the same report in WebFOCUS, and with one click you can transform it from figures to graphics.”

WebFOCUS’ data visualization capabilities permit the buyers to view these same departmental metrics as line graphs. They can chart progress as far as four years back and find all of the information they’re looking for on a single screen. For example, they can click on the marketing report, select a store and immediately see three slides that reveal density, number of customers, and the customer numbers during different times of the day. Viewing this data via bar graphs rather than in textual reports makes it easier to discern traffic patterns, enact targeted promotions, and allocate the sales force more effectively.

The ability to view the data in this fashion helps SACO plan for peak periods as they properly allocate staff and resources at various locations. Mr. Ayyoub believes that studying these trends will reduce their overall labor costs by as much as seven percent. “WebFOCUS enables us to make informed decisions in real time, and at this point in our organization’s growth, that’s invaluable.”

Currently 20 people use the reporting environment, a number that will grow to 75 users in the near future.

Remodeling for the Future

SACO plans to extend WebFOCUS to the accounting department to automate tedious analysis and benchmarking tasks. The company is also interested in rolling out WebFOCUS Magnify to enhance their search capabilities and using WebFOCUS Performance Management Framework (PMF) to create scorecards and personalized dashboards that help align operational objectives with strategic goals.

Mr. Ayyoub is most intrigued with deploying Information Builders’ complex event processing (CEP) technology to make the transition from real-time monitoring of retail transactions. “We can even layer geographical information on top of maps to gain further insight into customer behavior and company metrics,” he concludes. “The future of our BI efforts will be focused on real-time monitoring of events and predictive analysis of things to come. Information Builders has supplied the right tools for the job.”