The platform was soft launched to a group of users in March and has now been extended to all head office functions. The bookseller also intends to extend the platform’s use to store level.
The system provides staff with standard and ad-hoc business reports, accessed via a web browser. Data is available on sales and stock levels from all channels, as well as certain information on the retailer’s loyalty scheme.
Waterstone’s commercial director Neil Jewsbury said that the information the platform provides would assist with the rapid expansion of the retailer’s online channel and particularly help the company understand its customers better.
He said: “We created lots of interesting facts before, but now we are creating interesting facts that are driving people to do something.”
Each user sees a welcome page when they log into the portal, with key performance indicators relevant to their role. All head office users can drill down from the standard top-level reports into more detailed data – such as sales of a title at the store level.
Waterstone’s worked with Altius Consulting on the project, and has been able to set up the portal at very little cost using Windows SharePoint Services.
Previously, reports – which were often contradictory – were pulled from data in various legacy systems. Staff often held their own information in Excel spreadsheets.
The data warehouse standardises information pulled in from different sources so it is easy to create reports. In addition, data from external sources, such as Nielsen, is taken into the platform.
Jewsbury plans to include conversion rates generated by a customer counting system the retailer has introduced.
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