Harvey Nichols dumps legacy business intelligence suppliers

Business Objects and Hyperion shown the door

High fashion retail plays a big part Harvey Nichols sales

Department store Harvey Nichols has ditched Business Objects, Arthur Planning and Oracle-owned Hyperion business intelligence tools in favour of supplier Board.

The retailer said it can now support all of its business intelligence and performance management needs in one platform instead of from a series of products, modules and spreadsheets.

"We were driven by a business need and displacing multiple legacy solutions. At the same time we have been able to harmonise and reduce our maintenance costs. As we have only one licence to pay, it's more cost-effective," said Harvey Nichols' IT director, Martin Schofield.

Schofield recently addressed the Retail Solutions show in London in which he said he was looking at more thorough product management platforms and back-end systems to analyse trends in consumer behaviour.

“Collection of customer information will start at the point of sale. The data will then be cross-referenced with customer's purchase history, so we can target our promotions and products a lot more efficiently,” he said.