Tandem's Web-Enabled Data Warehouse Builds Profits for Home Improvements Retailer
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Tandem, a Compaq company, has announced that Europe's largest home-improvements retailer, the 400-store OBI chain, headquartered in Germany, is relying on a decision support solution from Tandem to put real-time customer buying information at the fingertips of its franchise managers. With a better understanding of their customers, store managers expect to improve their merchandise mix, in-stock positions, reduce handling costs and strengthen shopper loyalty, leading to greatly enhanced profitability.

The initial 150 users will grow to more than 25,000 users in OBI franchises across Europe. Ultimately, the chain's suppliers will be able to use world-wide Web browsers and the Internet to access the Tandem data warehouse. Information in the warehouse comprises customer profile information and daily point-of-sale transaction data, supplied by each store and updated every 24hours. OBI believes that the combination of speed in acquiring necessary data with OBI's ability to access and work with this information rapidly will provide a significant market advantage.

"One of our key business strategies is to stay in close contact with our customers in order to serve them better and provide lifestyle enhancing merchandise and services," said Joachim Zinke, CEO of OBI. "Tandem possessed an accurate understanding of our business needs and was able to match this to a vision of an enterprise information infrastructure. Tandem's unique ability to collect and manage massive amounts of data at affordable cost is essential to our strategy for success."

Expertise and technology power

In designing OBI's decision support solution (DSS), Tandem's Directional Consulting team worked closely with OBI executives to define and prioritise business initiatives and determine the associated ROI. Tandem then delivered a portfolio of business consulting and technology services, combining all the necessary resources to ensure the project's success.

The technology behind OBI's new one-to-one marketing solution includes Tandem's database software running on a Tandem high- performance server. This provides the scalable parallel processing power to handle massive daily updates and large numbers of concurrent database queries against detailed data rapidly and reliably.

The data warehouse is front-ended by the MicroStrategy DSS Server and DSS Web for fully functional decision support over the World Wide Web. Users can access the data warehouse and analyse the data using industry-standard Web browsers. MicroStrategy is a Tandem Decision Support Solutions Partner.

Access to the new decision support solution will be rolled out to the entire user base and to selected suppliers over the next 12 months. According to OBI, the reduction in inventory levels, the elimination of out-of-stock positions, reduced handling costs, and the faster time to market afforded by the new system will lead to a rapid and certain return on investment.

For more information, see http://www.tandem.com