User-driven Business Intelligence (BI) provider Qlik today announced that LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics is using the QlikView Business Discovery to drive in-store profitability and deliver savings of over £1 million in stock loss.
A UK-based cosmetics company with over 900 stores in 51 countries, LUSH is a manufacturer as well as a retailer and prides itself on delivering an excellent service to buyers, manufacturing teams, shops and customers.
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Working with many datasets – retail data within EPOS systems, supply chain and stock management, payroll and timesheet systems for staff management – LUSH needed a technology platform that could be used by employees at every level throughout the business to provide access to relevant sales, stock, store and staff information to improve performance. Working with specialist CRM consultancy and BI provider QGate, LUSH decided to deploy QlikView.
'We selected QlikView Business Discovery as it’s a very easy system for all of our staff to use, even with varying levels of technical experience,' said Scott Silverthorn, Head of Data Services at LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics.
'As it is used by many different parts of the business, QlikView allows us to continually make insights into our company. Some of the shop managers have told us they have had their most profitable year ever because QlikView has brought together the data they need to manage their sales, their stock and their staffing. By pulling it together in one place for analysis, QlikView allows them to make the right decision.'
The QlikView Business Discovery is deployed across the entire LUSH organisation. The retail accounts team uses QlikView to dig into the numbers behind the sales in each shop, to keep an eye on ledgers, petty cash and every other aspect of running the business financially.
The technology is also used in all the stores, so all the shop managers and employees on the shopfloor have access to QlikView Business Discovery report for updates every hour through the day with live access to their sales information, as well as their stock position so they can make the right decisions as they’re ordering in-store.
With 70% of staff accessing QlikView every day to review sales and stock and managers monitoring performance via the live sales tool, LUSH can also promote a healthy sense of competition across retail sites.
QlikView is also used in LUSH’s manufacturing department for stock management, allowing the team to facilitate orders between the factory and the shops and can keep an eye on stock position around the country.
Equally, QlikView has helped LUSH to get a view of its sales and stock which has led to improvements in forecasting and sourcing of key ingredients from ethical suppliers. This means that LUSH Cosmetics can maintain freshness through its supply chain.
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The technology is also used by LUSH’s payroll department to combine all of the data from timesheets and pay systems to get it into one report where they view absences, staffing costs and where profits are made. In combining QlikView with LUSH’s stock value management systems, the company was able to make savings of over £1 million in the first two years of deployment.
'At LUSH, our colleagues are naturally very inquisitive people and giving them access to data means they can find ways to improve performance to do a better job,” continued Silverthorn.
'I personally live in QlikView. The reporting function is so natural and intuitive that it’s easy to share with your colleagues so everyone gets the same experience. Our next goal will be to give our senior managers access to the technology, via tablets and mobile devices, where they can see at a glance how LUSH is performing.'
