Carphone Warehouse using business intelligence to improve store performance and customer marketing

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Carphone Warehouse has improved its store performance and marketing to customers using business intelligence software by MicroStrategy.

The largest independent telecommunications retailer in Europe (around 2,400 stores across eight European markets, including 794 in the UK) launched a new store format Wireless World in 2010, with live devices and interactive areas, an extended product range and improved placement of a wider range of accessories.

Carphone Warehouse had legacy reporting issues and so the new store infrastructure prompted an overhaul in technology, with Netezza used as the Data Warehouse and MicroStrategy for analytics and reporting. After reviewing and identifying the key business areas with high dependency on reporting, Carphone Warehouse focused initially on retail KPI and marketing. The MicroStrategy dashboards were found to be much more dynamic and with easy visualisation presenting detailed analytics in a way branch managers could understand. After a phased rollout, all UK and Ireland stores now have the ability to analyse performance and sales.
 
"As this is used by branch managers it needed to provide them with easy to understand insight on store performance and branch feedback has been unanimously positive," said Paul Scullion, Head of BI Development, Carphone Warehouse. "After a successful roll-out in the UK and Ireland, the next stage is expansion into Sweden and The Netherlands and then further launches into Germany, France, Spain and Portugal."
 
Customer marketing is another key business area with high dependency on reporting. With an operator shift to 24 month contracts, Carphone Warehouse had limited engagement with customers during this period. A Marketing Dashboard was devised to combat this issue and after an initial pilot within the Group Customer Marketing function, it is now live in all eight European territories. The dashboard has replaced a number of legacy reports and locally maintained customer databases.
 
"It was difficult to gauge satisfaction levels, whether they were a Carphone Warehouse customer or a network customer or when a customer reaches the end of their network contract, do they come back to Carphone Warehouse?" continued Paul Scullion, Carphone Warehouse. "The MicroStrategy dashboard we are using now has provided insight never before seen in Carphone Warehouse."