Electrical retailer Comet is using business intelligence (BI) software to generate detailed, real time information about performance and improve profitability.

The company has been using BI tools for three years to help make more informed decisions about stock management and purchasing strategies for its 250 shops.

The firm has moved to a single system made up of home grown applications and software from vendors MicroStrategy and Conchango, allowing key managers to make informed business decisions based on consistent and reliable data.

Andy Hicketts, Comet Information Systems development controller says the company had to decide whether it would buy the software or build it itself.

‘In our case we built our own extract, transfer and load tool. This allows us to have one version of the truth for our data,’ said Hicketts.

The company extracts data from other operational systems to get a clear idea of how much money it makes on the products it sells, and to gauge the impact of distribution, service, warranty and delivery costs.

Comet now has an intranet-based reporting system that matches transactional data with product profitability and supplier management systems to deliver key performance indicators for managing margins, quality and stock management.

Hicketts says the company’s commercial teams and category product managers can now see the revenue potential of each product to improve buying decisions and increase profitability.

The product category managers who buy stock for Comet shops now have intranet access to a direct product profitability application based on the BI system, to maximise turnover per square metre of sales space according to the needs of individual stores.

‘It is important for us to have an understanding the relevant retail performance metrics and a way of producing them and putting them in front of the right people at the right time,’ he said.

‘This has given us real time business intelligence with answers to real business-led issues.’