About

The Client is a multinational FMCG corporation operating in more than 200 markets with 1 billion consumers and 60,000 employees across the globe.

Challenge

One of the Client national branches was distributing 100 SKUs through a marketing channel comprising 10 large retail chains and 10,500 stores. To perform sales analysis, the Client had to collect data from retailers in multiple files and formats, which significantly reduced productivity and did not provide analysts with a holistic view. Therefore, VolgoTechnologies was commissioned with a project to create a system that would process and unify data to deliver advanced retail analytics.

Solution

an analytical engine (MS SQL Server Analysis Services, or SSAS) that aggregates monthly (or weekly) data, stores it in a multidimensional model (OLAP cube) and transmits to the front-end application (Power Pivot for MS Excel). The cube has several dimensions, namely time, the retail chain – store hierarchy, SKU category and others. Additionally, the engine calculates sophisticated KPIs – for example, sales growth in a particular store for a certain period of time.

Staging

Datawarehouse

Dataware House

Desktop Application

Results

The Client was satisfied with the solution as it provided a tool for an advanced sales analysis. The company is now able to identify sales trends, find out which SKUs and stores showed best performance, estimate growth potential as well as optimize sales and marketing activities. In cooperation with VolgoTechnologies, the Client is also planning to implement elaborate data visualization.

Technologies and Tools

MS Windows Server 2008 R2 (64 bit), MS SQL Server 2008 R2, Entity Framework 6.1.1, MS SQL Server Analysis Services, .NET 4.5, ASP.NET MVC 4, Bootstrap 3.0.1, Power Pivot for MS Excel