Easy to Use Analytics Drives Fast User Adoption
and Business Agility
Car Toys is the largest independent retailer of mobile entertainment and wireless phones in the US. It has more than 1,200 employees in 52 locations throughout Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Texas.
Challenge
When Director of Information Systems Stefan Nellenbach joined Car Toys, he was impressed with the analytical bent of the company's managers and sales staff. "They wanted to take sales data and flip it every which way and backward to drive the business," he said. Nellenbach searched for a business intelligence solution that would meet everyone’s reporting needs. He chose PivotLink because it could handle huge sets of data and deliver information quickly. “We didn’t want a solution that built static data cubes from the data we loaded,” he said. “The fact that PivotLink could do it on the fly was amazing. And the interface is simple – anyone in the company can use the software to make better decisions.”
What Car Toys needed was a business intelligence solution that could:
-
Increase user adoption and satisfaction
-
Integrate data from multiple systems
-
Provide easy access to critical metrics and analysis
-
Drastically reduce dependence on IT for custom developed SQL reports
Solution
Building on Nellenbach’s success with sales analytics, the new IT Director, Tom Lockwood, decided to expand the company’s use of PivotLink and introduced more users to the solution. Lockwood, who later became CIO, worked to bring more employees up to speed on the PivotLink solution to reduce the time his team was spending on building custom reports on other applications.
“Because there were so many people who hadn’t been introduced to PivotLink, my staff was still developing dozens of custom SQL reports every month,” Lockwood said. “They would take anywhere from a few hours to weeks to create, then minutes or hours to process and print.”
Lockwood also went to the company’s founder and CEO to get his approval to start using the PivotLink solution for all reports. “That wasn’t hard,” said Lockwood. “I took the CEO’s favorite report, put it in PivotLink, and showed him how to use it. The CEO was an instant convert – all of a sudden he could see comparative sales data anytime, from any web browser.”
Results
About 125 sales, merchandising and administrative staff use PivotLink routinely. “The investment in PivotLink is the best use of software dollars we have ever made,” said Lockwood. “Our CFO is logged on all day, the senior vice president of sales and the regional managers are on board, and the managers and assistant managers of all 54 stores use it – and love it.”
Benefits
The PivotLink Business Intelligence Platform provides the following benefits for Car Toys:
-
Flexible analytics that meet the needs of all business users, including executives, sales and regional managers, sales staff and merchandising clerks
-
Easy to use, customizable reports
-
Eliminated the need for IT to develop time consuming, custom SQL reports
-
Integrated data from multiple systems, including GERS point of sale, Oracle financial and ADP HR
-
Ability to do budget analysis, eliminating the need to invest in additional Oracle licenses
