sportscheck - we do sports
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Success Story SportScheck GmbH
Precision landing with predictive analytics
SportScheck is one of the largest retailers of sporting goods in Germany. As a
multi-channel company, it is a specialized provider of equipment and clothing
for nearly every type of sport. At SportScheck, the multi-channel strategy means
16 sales locations across Germany, 30,000 items from 400 international brands,
four main catalogs with up to 660 pages, and a range of specialty catalogs. To
view the complete catalog and store product lines, visit www.sportscheck.com.
Sporting service: Thanks to the cooperation with Blue Yonder, SportScheck,
one of Germany‘s largest providers of sporting goods, has improved the qual-
ity of its forecasts by 20 to 40 percent. Especially in online trade, this multi-
channel company anticipates even more forecasts on the item level during the
next project phase.
The greatest complexity and immense quantities of
data: Blue Yonder predicts item sales in SportScheck‘s
online shop with great precision.
Why Blue Yonder?
“Changed consumer behavior presents us with enormous challenges:
customers are ordering online more and more often and return rates are increasing.
In the online sector, there is a multitude of factors involved and we have to deal with an
immense quantity of information. We need software that can map this complexity and also
incorporate all aspects of visitor behavior . We cannot afford to make incorrect predictions,
for these have a significant effect on the success of our business.“Günther Harant, Procurement Manager at SportScheck
“The structural change in retail trade from the catalog to the Internet
has presented us with entirely new challenges. With the unique solution developed
by Blue Yonder, sales figures can be predicted exactly.
This is crucial for success in the difficult online trade.“Günther Harant, Procurement Manager at SportScheck
With 1.1 million customers in retail trade, approximately 17 million
customers in stores, and 35 million visitors to its online shop each
year, handling huge quantities of data is part of daily life at Sport-
Scheck. The online shop increases complexity significantly in this
respect. Günther Harant, Procurement Manager at SportScheck:
“The structural change in retail trade from the catalog to the Internet
has presented us with entirely new challenges. Blue Yonder bundles
methods into a unique solution in order to predict sales figures pre-
cisely. This is crucial for success in the difficult online business.“
Blue Yonder follows structural change towards e-commerce
In contrast to the classic catalog customer, visitors to the online
shop are much more difficult to hold on to. The weather, marketing
activities on the part of manufacturers, and the positioning of the
items in the shop: Customer react spontaneously to a wide range
of different factors. As time goes on, the self-learning forecasting
software Blue Yonder learns how the various external variables
and the interplay of different factors in the shop affect anticipated
sales. This might be the behavior of customers during the order
process: Are their shopping carts actually submitted? How high is
the abandonment rate? Where is the customer at the moment? The
software can also handle the dynamics of an online shop very well
because, in contrast to a catalog with fixed placements, the online
items are ranked according to their success and thus their positions
change constantly. In addition, each visitor is presented with vari-
ous items in a unique sequence according to individual searches he
has conducted and his profile.
Sales forecasts for the online shop are extremely complex
Compared with the usual method, Blue Yonder can be used to reduce
the average absolute deviation of the forecast from the actual sales
figures by half. The return rate is also determined more precisely. In
addition, the software achieves very good results for the forecast-
ing of clothing sizes. Currently, the materials planners compare sales
forecasts from the classic shopping calculator and the Blue Yonder
forecast for each individual item. They weigh up results themselves
and order on this basis.
Determining return rates precisely
For three years, SportScheck has been working with Blue Yonder to
improve the quality of sales forecasts on the individual item level.
“Changed consumer behavior presents us with enormous challeng-
es: Customers are ordering online more and more often online and
return rates are increasing. In the online sector, there is a multitude
of factors involved and we have to deal with an immense quantity
of information. We need software that can map this complexity and
also incorporate all aspects of visitor behavior. We cannot afford to
make incorrect predictions, for these have a significant impact on
our net profits.“ NeuroBayes determines relationships among count-
less factors (Big Data) and creates very precise sales forecasts in real
time. The software is designed so that sudden developments can
be recognized and taken into account quickly. “We can react more
quickly and flexibly,“ says to Günther Harant. This is how Blue Yonder
has improved its forecasts by 20 to 40 percent in the past three years.
Forecast improvement of 20 to 40 percent
Blue Yonder GmbH & Co. KG
Karlsruher Straße 88
D-76139 Karlsruhe
Phone +49 (0)721 383 117 0
Fax +49 (0)721 383 117 69
www.blue-yonder.com
Use your data to navigate to successStill have any unanswered questions? Looking for a partner who
can help you develop forecasts that are specifically tailored to your own sets of data? Contact Dunja Riehemann (Tel +49
(0)721 383 117 36, [email protected]) to join
us in this visionary venture.
For more information, visit us at: www.blue-yonder.com