Foto: Salling Group

“We have been very impressed with how much understanding Dataminds have had of our business and our needs. Moreover, they have been proactive in delivering suggestions that we did not necessarily think of ourselves. The process itself has been very satisfactory too. When we have had questions and changes, we quickly got an answer as to when we could expect a solution – and they have done it quickly. There has been good communication all the way round. We felt very prioritised.

We still have a very good dialogue about changes and analyses. We have received assistance in questions related to understanding too. Not only do they help with data, they also have a great understanding of our data. I am sure that many other firms and other functions in our house can benefit from Dataminds’ service too. We requested something very specific, and they have fully met the requirements. We are impressed with the solution. We spent a lot of time on these things before, and now they have saved us a lot of time.”

Kathrine Kold Deleuran, Market Intelligence, Salling Group

Flexible standard reports in Market Intelligence

The Market Intelligence department in Salling Group needed a tool that easily, safely., and flawlessly could address reporting to the right recipients, in the right amounts and in time. They needed a environment where ad-hoc analyses are possible and where new aspects of data, that are not a part of the standard reporting, can be illuminated. 

Challenge

The Danish retailing market is characterised by tough competition from both domestic and foreign actors, a dense network of stores and consumer tendencies that are increasingly challenging to traditional retailing. Consumers are aware, critical, and very disloyal. This demands retailers to be synchronised with respect to the expectations of their costumers and new market tendencies.

To be at the forefront of the consumers at any time, Salling Group, in various occasions, collects feedback from both customers and non-customers through questionnaires. As Denmark’s largest retailer with four different store concepts, data collection is not enough. The key to increased knowledge about consumers and action-oriented insights lies in adapting the reporting so it always focuses on delivering the relevant results to the right recipients. In Market Intelligence in Salling Group, the following was needed:

  • A tool that easily, safely, and flawlessly could address reporting to the right recipients, in the right amounts and in time.
  • Easy and clear access to data at the lowest level. An environment where ad-hoc analyses are possible and where new aspects of data, that are not part of the standard reporting, can be illuminated.

Solution

Today, Salling Group do their reporting in Dataminds Report Builder. An Excel-based application that can be used for all the data sources that you normally work with in Excel. In Dataminds Report Builder, graphs and other report elements are created in Excel and does not require additional competences from the end user. The report configuration is saved and reused when data is updated and the same reports can be generated based on the refreshed data. Dataminds Report Builder converts the reports to commented PowerPoint presentations that are easily distributed to the organization.

The data collection runs continuously and is automatically merged into the monthly reporting. After collection, the data set is sent through Dataminds’ data-robot in an SPSS-file with more than 1000 columns of answers. The data-robot cleans, validates, and prepares data for reporting. Afterwards, the data is structured in dimensions and fact-tables through Dataminds’ data model for questionnaire data. This solves the challenge of having a relatively large amount of data and a large catalogue of background information regarding the respondents that one could base a division of the results on. This is done without loss of anonymity; all respondents are totally anonymous and identification of individuals is impossible. Furthermore, the usage of a standardised data model implies that reporting can easily be implemented directly in another reporting tool, e.g. Power BI, in the future.

The value

In cooperation with the Market Intelligence department at Salling Group, Dataminds has designed a flexible solution that makes it possible to get from questionnaire data to goal-oriented, complete reports for the decision-makers in the retailers Bilka, føtex, Netto, and the board of directors. This is done in the shortest amount of time possible without manual handling of either data or graph-making.

Today, Market Intelligence can distribute all commented reports on the same day that data is delivered. They spend less time checking and building standard reports, which means that they can allocate more time to ad-hoc analyses and improvement of the ongoing reporting. Moreover, Market Intelligence are still able to easily change the reports corresponding to their needs and to add comments to each report. Dataminds has delivered a solution where existing technology and competences in Market Intelligence are used to a great extent, and where the need of having a flexible and reliable reporting is still fulfilled. The delivery is fully scalable and based on Dataminds’ particular approach to data modelling and reporting, based on 20 years of experience from both large and small firms.