Electrical retailer Comet has seen its profits rise by up to 20 per cent in stores using business intelligence technology.

The company installed a system from Conchango at the end of last year as an extension to a data warehouse previously deployed across the company's head office and supply chain.

Now Comet is providing managers at its 249 stores with information about how to make the most of store layout and special offers.

And the company says some shops have seen profit increases of up to 20 per cent as a result of the new software.

'Performance is related to obvious market conditions, but also to the information we give our store managers and the actions they take with that information,' said Andy Hicketts, information systems development controller at Comet.

'I've seen a significant increase in the ability of our retail managers to make local decisions based around real information at a level they have never been able to do previously. We have tried to give enough detail but not too much detail to our store managers and tried to focus on better use of that information, whether it is details of margins of sales or key performance indicators,' he said.

The Conchango software at Comet is intranet-based, allowing managers to access their own store data and compare it with other stores across the country.

Conchango has been working with Comet for the past five years and implemented its data warehouse. Comet was able to keep costs down by deploying the technology on its existing infrastructure.

'We have introduced Microstrategy version 7i as a web front end utilising intelligent application servers configured by Conchango. The infrastructure allows us to access our existing Oracle data warehouse and provide the information direct to our users via an AS400,' said Hicketts.