Data Warehouse as a Service for IKEA Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia
IKEA requested Adastra to deliver a data warehouse as a service to avoid maintenance of servers, licenses, and solution operations, while enhancing customer insights and sales strategies.
department stores in 3 countries are using the new data warehouse
months lasted the realization of the full solution
Background
Why don’t IKEA FAMILY members need to keep their receipts? The answer is easy: they are always available online. IKEA has a new Data Warehouse (DWH) that saves all purchase transactions.
You can check yours via the IKEA FAMILY website, so you don’t need to worry about losing the original paper receipts from the cash desk.
The new DWH solution implemented by Adastra for IKEA enables much more. The solution operates in a cloud environment accessible via VPN, i. e., secured, and we provide it to IKEA as a service.
Challenge: DWH as a Service for a Retail Giant
There is no need to introduce IKEA. Nevertheless, you might be interested in knowing: As of August 31, 2015, the IKEA Group had 328 stores in 28 countries featuring a range of approx. 9,500 products amongst which around 2,500 of them are renewed and redesigned every year. In FY2015, 771 mil. people visited IKEA stores, an increase of 7.7% over FY2014. 155 thousand employees served IKEA customers worldwide. In FY2015, the IKEA Group had 978 home furnishing suppliers in 50 countries. Total sales reached €31.9 billion.
Building a data warehouse (DWH) for IKEA Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia continues the customer data quality project. The new DWH collects and centralizes data from 4 stores in the Czech Republic, 2 stores in Hungary and 1 in Slovakia. IKEA requested Adastra to deliver a DWH as a service to avoid maintenance of servers, licenses, solution operations and others.
Solution
The final cloud solution supports the client in the following ways:
- Predefined reports in MS Reporting Services accessible in a web browser or distributed by email (e.g., KPI reports, sales reports for selected products and product groups, campaign and event evaluations, sales geography, visitation, customer base analyses and others).
- A data cube for ad-hoc analysis accessible via Excel (analysis of sales, receipts, customers etc.).
- Electronic receipt (transaction history of IKEA customers was a requirement of the client) – for IKEA employees via a web application and for IKEA customers (IKEA FAMILY members) as a part of a newly implemented IKEA FAMILY web site.
- Targeting customers in campaigns via Adastra Campaign Management (another part of the final solution).
- SQL querying via the SQL Server Management Studio via a remote desktop (ad-hoc reporting, etc.).
- Regular and ad-hoc analyses of customer purchase behavior at IKEA (frequency of purchases, average receipt, customer lifecycle, etc.).
Impact
Adastra successfully completed the project and it is working now. Go ahead, have a look. Those of you who are members of IKEA FAMILY can now find their purchase history at the new IKEA FAMILY web site. The deployment of an Adastra’s Campaign Management was another key feature of the project.
By integrating MS Reporting Services, a data cube for Excel, and electronic receipts, IKEA enhanced customer insights and sales strategy. Targeted campaigns and SQL querying enabled precise marketing, boosting engagement and understanding of purchase behavior, driving business growth.
