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.”

Empowering employees with self-service business intelligence

When QlikView was brought to DWR’s attention it seemed like everything clicked. The guided analytics platform delivered the self-service BI needed to let business users drive decision-making. QlikView also connects data from multiple sources into a single application with dynamic apps that can be optimized for mobile access. It was a natural fit for DWR, which wanted to more effectively utilize IT while simultaneously putting actionable information into the hands of its studio sales team.

With QlikView, DWR was able to design an Area Manager Dashboard for the iPad, to display details regarding an Area Manager’s specific businesses. IT now pushes data out to users, which they access on their iPads to get immediate insight into the inventory in their studios.

At a glance, the studio sales team can see every DWR product and access other data to better allocate and manage products. Additionally, the custom security settings of QlikView allow DWR to control the data being presented to the sales team based on their specific needs.

Getting greater insight into vendors and sales

Beyond the studio sales team, QlikView gives the DWR headquarters team insight into vendor activities with a Vendor Scorecard. The HQ team can see sales measured against returns, for example, which can create cost savings by addressing issues with certain products before they turn into problems. Additionally, daily sales reports (which used to be manually created by finance from multiple data sources) have been automated with QlikView — saving 2-3 hours per day.

A little more than a year after the deployment, QlikView has been rolled out to every department in the organization, including finance, inventory planning, HR and marketing. In all, 80 QlikView users across the business now have immediate access to data — and are empowered to make business decisions without waiting for IT.