Zalando - Powerful Data Analytics & Visualization Tools ... Zalando Zalando now offers an online selection of over 150,000 types of clothing products and shoes for women, men, and
Post on 05-Apr-2018
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Company:Zalando
Zalando now offers an online selection of over 150,000
types of clothing products and shoes for women, men, and
children as well as accessories and sports gear. This range of
offerings includes everything from well-known trend brands
to hot designer labels. Zalando works with over 1,500 brand
manufacturers. Robert Gentz and David Schneider founded
the Berlin-based company in 2008 and are already servicing
15 European markets. To sum it up, the company has gone
from nothing to 1.8 billion EUR in sales in just five years.
Yet the company’s sense for e-business and fashion trends is just one of its
many facets. Behind the scenes, high-powered technology is also responsible
for the company’s success: the “Zalando Technology” department is one
of the business’s core divisions with over 400 employees in the areas of
product management, engineering, and quality assurance. In addition to the
shop platform, the team also develops the entire IT platform, the interfaces
to the individual specialty departments such as purchasing and content
creation, as well as the whole logistics system. The team also happens to do a
considerable amount of this work on its own.
Where it makes sense, professional, experienced service providers are
selectively brought in as strong partners. Zalando significantly benefits
from their expertise and experience in further developing the company.
One such partner is the business analytics service provider MicroStrategy,
whose solution is being implemented at Zalando as a BI front end.
A detailed look at the company’s processes makes it clear just how
important an analytical tool is for Zalando. Zalando’s customers can choose
from multiple payment methods such as by invoice, by advance payment,
or by credit card. They are also given a live tracking option to follow their
order, which in many cases is sent out from the logistics center the very
same day. Not only are there no shipping costs, but the Internet shop is also
famous for its free returns.
As one might imagine, this all produces large volumes of data – both
from customer transactions as well as through communications with
logistics partners. Zalando also wants to maintain an overview of its
inventory and suppliers, as well as keep track of its customer relationships
as a whole. For this purpose, the fashion company generates analyses
and reports, such as on sold items and return rates. “We are always
scrutinizing our processes, measuring our success and efficiency
CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY: RETAIL
based on the value-added chain, and constantly improving as a result.
Accordingly, business intelligence is pivotal and crucial for Zalando since
it is one of the key tools,” says Eric von Czapiewski, Head of Business
Intelligence at Zalando. This begins with a comprehensive, high-quality
database and extends through to high-performance end applications
and fast analysis processes. “This way we make it possible for Zalando
to reach the next steps in its development and uncover optimization
potential along the way,” von Czapiewski continues.
While these processes are now perfect, getting them that way was a rough
journey. One challenge was the subsequent modification of already existing
reporting processes in the specialty departments and integrating reporting
and BI solutions into the Internet retailer’s operational processes. Much of
this was difficult to comprehend in the follow-up phase, which made it
accordingly complicated. Ultimately, however, the system has very good
interactive capabilities for users and gives specialty departments the option
to quickly integrate their own data into reporting solutions.
The process for introducing the BI solution was divided into three large
phases. In the first phase, the Zalando team documented the central
requirements and analyzed the business processes that were to be
supported. In the second phase, the core elements of the metadata were
developed and minor changes were made to the underlying data model.
In the third phase, the metadata were further expanded in short iterations in
collaboration with the specialty division. The teams additionally generated
reports and dashboards and gradually expanded them while also verifying
the correctness of their content and reviewing their technical efficiency.
Although it was very complex and required additional time and effort
alongside everyday business activities, the project went smoothly.
The overarching goal of introducing the BI solution was to give the specialty
departments a faster decision-making process. “This was to be done by
reducing the number of manual work steps, providing simpler access to
relevant data, and creating easier, data-supported coordination processes
with neighboring specialty departments,” Eric von Czapiewski says. The BI
team made this possible by involving the specialty departments early on
and by working closely together during the entire duration of the project.
The result is that the fashion retailer can now adapt its product range ad hoc
to customer preferences thanks to analytical BI, optimize revenue streams,
and identify future sources of revenue even faster. Zalando is thus “à la
mode” – not only for its customers, but also in-house by getting the most
benefits out of its use of technology.
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