CASE STUDY - CARREFOUR

The BI solution implemented by Enterprise Concept gives us the data hierarchy right there on the page so we know exactly which data elements are included or excluded. It prevents confusion and reduces the time needed to get answers to managements questions. If we see something in a report and want to know what is behind the trend, we can drill down quickly to the exact level of detail we need.
Pawel Burzynski, Director Finance, Carrefour. Industry
Retail

Product(s)
Hyperion Essbase

Challenge Complicated, error-prone, manual processes for analysis and reporting No single system for company wide reporting and Analysis Full burden of data entry, manual synchronization, reporting and analysis on the finance team Solution
Consolidate financial processes Monitor and manage inventories Cross-system data consistency and accuracy Dynamic ad-hoc reporting without requiring IT involvement Develop a reporting platform

Enterprise Concept, With The Help of BI Applications, Fuels Greater Profitability Management At Carrefour
Summary
At Enterprise Concepts recomandation, Carrefour has chosen a BI solution for analysis and reporting at financial level. Carrefour uses Hyperion Essbase to consolidate and automate its financial processes. The flexibility and ease of use of the solution have made it easier for store managers to gain greater insight into their stores performance. This has enabled Carrefour to quickly respond underperforming stores, improve strategic decision making, and streamline financial processes, with one person accomplishing in a week what previously took five people a month.

Increasing efficiency
Since 2007, when it embarked on a companywide consolidation initiative, Carrefour has relied on Hyperion Essbase to consolidate and automate its financial processes. The flexibility and ease of use of the Hyperion software made it much easier for the company to generate monthly and year-to-date financial statements. Store managers use these reports to gain greater insight into their stores performance, and corporate planners use them to analyze and evaluate merchandizing plans and sales results. By looking at key drivers such as inventory levels, sales margins, markdowns, and inventory receipts, operations managers are better able to understand and locate the success and risk factors.

Results
Increased understanding of store performance Improved strategic decisionmaking ability with data-backed findings Enabled company to quickly respond to underperforming stores Compressed financial analysis cycle from one week to one day Reduced resources required to process financial analysis from five people to one Enabled frequent, widespread distribution of financial reports

About Carrefour
Over the past 40 years, the Carrefour group has grown to become one of the worlds leading distribution groups. The worlds second-largest retailer and the largest in Europe, the group currently operates four main grocery store formats: hypermarkets, supermarkets, hard discount and convenience stores. The Carrefour group currently has over 12,500 stores, either company-operated or franchises and revenues of over 37.6 billion Euros in 2007.

Number of users
15 Users on Hyperion Essbase

Improving satisfaction

performance

and

job Accurate data feeds company direction

Armed with fact-based findings made possible by the BI solution implemented by Enterprise Concept, Carrefour is now better able to determine what initiatives to invest in and where expansion makes sense. As mister Burjzynski explains, Hyperion Essbase has allowed us to light a fire under a concept and push it forward more quickly than otherwise would have been possible. As a result, we can justify the amount of money we commit to a new venture, such as our stores. It has really helped us fine-tune our strategic focus.

Today, more than 15 Carrefour, Romania employees use Hyperion Essbase every day to track store data; store managers access this information to get their store information; and senior-level Carrefour executives use the reports for business planning and strategic purposes. Across the organization, the BI solution implemented has streamlined financial processes. With Hyperion, we can now do with one person that which once took five, and we can get it done in a week as opposed to a month, says mister Burjzynski. In addition, Hyperion has been widely embraced by employees because of its ease of use and flexibility. Mister Burjzynski notes, The employees are much happier with their ability to access information, which in turn increases job satisfaction.

Delivering a return on capital

Carrefour recently discovered the advantages of leveraging the BI solution implemented by Enterprise Concept to manage store profitability in a more robust way: to look beyond purely sales numbers to examine and measure the true profitability of its stores. This understanding comes about by taking into account the role of other factors such as fixed costs, which often distort results about store performance, particularly of newer stores. Now we have developed a more robust way to manage store profitability. Using the data we can now generate, we are able to isolate all of the fixed costs that affect store profitability the amount of square footage, capital invested, inventory levels, and other fixed costs. That way, we can rank stores appropriately, says mister Burjzynski. This analysis has particularly helped the retailer evaluate performance of its new smaller format stores, which require relatively large investments of capital to get up-and-running. We really need to understand where this format is working well and where it isnt, says mister Burjzynski.

The BI solution implemented by Enterprise Concept is very easy to learn and run. It is designed for finance people, so our department can reate solutions very quickly with complete control of the end result. We now have a single, powerful system that easily manages the massive volumes of data and handles even our most complex analytic needs with ease.
Pawel Burzynski, Director Finance, Carrefour