Case Study - Data Agility
Mystery shopping research delivery “changes industry”
Business Intelligence portal provides on-demand customer service reports for blue chip retailers
The largest provider of mystery shopping services in Australia and New Zealand faced a considerable logistical challenge to collate and report on data from 70,000 mystery shoppers for their blue-chip retail clients. Their existing processes were manual and expensive, prompting them to engage Data Agility to replace the entire data collation and reporting process.
Aims
The aim of the project was to improve data quality, reduce timelines for data collation and reporting back to customers, and cut costs. A business intelligence (BI) portal was required to allow retail clients to log on and view their company’s research results. The solution needed to accommodate a wide range of users and needs – from store managers who just view and print reports, to regional managers with high expectations and the requirement to create their own analysis on data.
Solution
Data Agility selected Zap Business Intelligence for the BI portal. “We wanted a solution that would be easy for our customer to maintain themselves, without needing a technical guru,” explained Martin Greenlees, General Manager, Northern Region, Data Agility. “Ease of use was a major factor, as was 100% web delivery, SQL Server integration, and return on investment.”
The BI portal in the initial phase has 1,500-1,800 users from a variety of major retailers, and this is expected to increase by another 1,000 users. One retailer alone has 900 store managers and 200 regional managers using the system. The major load on the portal occurs every Monday morning, when hundreds of users log in simultaneously to view their customer service results from the previous week. Each client also has the ability to create their own reports, using analysis, slices and filtering on their data.
In the technical design of the system, security was very important so that users could only see appropriate data. Each client has their own cubes and separate workspace. Data Agility created a dynamic security model, and integrated it seamlessly with Zap Business Intelligence. This minimises the reporting workload – for instance, instead of creating 800 individual store reports with a different store filter for each one, there is a single store report, and the cube security handles which data each user can see.
Results
The BI solution has greatly reduced costs for the mystery shopping company – return on investment (ROI) could be achieved in a short period of time. “Our client’s customer satisfaction rates have increased dramatically,” Martin Greenlees said. “Retailers are saying that the improvements made to mystery shopping data collation and reporting will set a new standard for the whole industry.”
The retailers benefit from instant, on-demand access to reliable research results about their customer service. Their confidence in the reliability of the data has increased, and timelines for receiving reports are much shorter. They also now have the ability to create their own analysis and reports.