With accessibility at the heart of the business, Design Within Reach (DWR) studio sales teams must know what inventory is on the floor in all 45 locations at all times to control stock effectively.
After all, Rob Forbes founded this multichannel modern furnishings retailer with 45 locations across the U.S. after becoming frustrated with his inability to find the designs he loved.
Not only do DWR sales teams need to be able to supervise inventory, but Area Sales Managers also need to report and receive real time information while in the field, so they can monitor sales, demand and trends at the studios they supervise.
Before QlikView, sales and inventory data was often analyzed using Excel or custom built SAP Crystal Reports. The IT team spent large amounts of time doing one-off pulls from the company’s databases. Since reports using that data were created by different people using different processes, there was no way of knowing if information was being analyzed using uniform definitions.
“It felt like we were in the Dark Ages using Excel,” Bethany Kemp, Vice President, Information Systems at DWR, said. “To best serve our clients, we need the best information. It seemed like there was no single form of truth to the way we were approaching data analysis.”