SMB Spotlight: Fast Fashion Needs Fast BI
Clothing brand Micro Fashion capitalizes on trends and increases turnover with Qlik.
In the fast world of retail, time is money. In the world of high-end fashion, being trendy directly correlates with being timely. This was certainly the case for Micro Fashion, an 85-employee producer of high-quality men’s fashion for Europe’s retail traders and department stores.
Micro Fashion had a lot of reports to create, a lot of analysis to consider, and not enough time to turn that data into a real-time effect on stocking shelves efficiently. For a small business, operating smartly and efficiently is critical to maintain those profit margins. While their previous analytics tool, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, was working, the amount of time it took to create reports (up to 3 hours) and extract meaningful insights was taking up too much time.
Micro Fashion needed a solution that could tell them what to put on the shelves, what was selling and what wasn’t. Most importantly, they needed this information quickly so they could capitalize on current fashion trends. They began the search for a new platform, and after attending a local Qlik Seminar, the team at Micro Fashion was immediately impressed. According to Guido Verhagen, the Chief Information Officer at Micro Fashion:
“During a proof of concept, our biggest file was loaded, and Qlik spat out the same report in a few seconds that we had usually spent so long on. We were immediately convinced that Qlik offered us the right solutions.”
With the help of Dutch partner Victa, Qlik was rolled out to 25 employees in conjunction with Microsoft Dynamics. The sales reports, which are EDIFACT messages, were processed in Microsoft Dynamics NAV and then Qlik was used to extract the data that Micro Fashion wanted to see, such as invoice information, order reports, and turnover ratios. This allowed for all of their pertinent data to be culled in minutes, as opposed to hours.
With Qlik, Micro Fashion reports that KPI measurement has improved at every level, and after initial success, Qlik has also been used for marketing automation. Micro Fashion is using their data in a big way, even for an SMB. Now that their data analysis is being handled timely and efficiently, Micro Fashion can get back to what they do best – dressing Europe in style.
