International IT solutions provider, Logicalis has begun a new Business Intelligence (BI) project for retail consortium, Nisa Retail. The cloud-based solution replaces Nisa’s existing on-premise offering, enabling its business users to gain deeper insight, faster, and better inform key business decisions to help shape the company’s proposition and support continued growth in the competitive convenience retail sector.

David Morris, Head of IT at Nisa Retail, explained, “Our incumbent Business Intelligence solution, an aging version of IBM Cognos hosted on-premise, gave us a glimpse of what was possible with BI and analytics, but we knew we could do more to leverage the technology. We wanted to adopt a new approach that would pool all data sources from right across the business, to put the right information, in the right users’ hands, and quickly.”

Logicalis is deploying the latest version of IBM Cognos, hosted on its cloud platform and wrapped with professional services inclusive of training for Nisa’s team. Through the Proof of Concept and early implementation, the process by which data is processed and then presented to the business teams for use, has already been transformed, according to Morris:

“Whereas previously it was taking the team days to build data cubes, it’s now just a matter of hours, with far greater consistency,” he said. “As we look to mesh together data from warehousing and logistics, to what customers are buying and where and when, the information garnered will be invaluable. It will help us to shape and refine our proposition, such as negotiating better costs with our suppliers, to directly benefit our retailers’ bottom line – enabling them to be even more competitive on the high-street.”

Nisa’s business users have also felt the early benefits. With the cloud-based solution providing greater performance, business users from across the trading, finance and customer insight teams have been able to drill down into the analytics instantly, with no delay or latency on the system, providing a far great user experience. “The solution has re-invigorated the use of Business Intelligence in the organisation,” explained Morris.

“Our previous solution was viewed as something that simply existed to help Nisa’s business users get from A to B in their roles. Now, as they dive deeper than ever before into our data, the solution is regarded as a key tool for delivering tangible business benefits and informing key decisions, focusing the IT department on areas that really help drive the business forward.”

Implementation of the BI solution is currently underway, and expected to be fully operational across the retail business in Q4 this year.

Mark Starkey, Managing Director of Logicalis UK, commented, “Business Intelligence is all about the opportunity to engage and act upon the right information, at the right time. Critical data is being captured by organisations like Nisa everyday that, when put to work, can inform better customer engagement, marketing and growth strategies.

“IT departments in retail are coming under increasing pressure to align more closely with business strategy, and now is the time to re-shape the IT function to focus on high-value, strategic initiatives. With this initiative, Nisa’s IT team is seizing the opportunity to do just that, enabling its users to exploit IT to make a genuine mark on business performance to the benefit of its members.”