The Retailer ’sPer formanceGuideHow Retail Executives and Store Managers

Can Use Mobile Reporting to Drive Bottom-Line Results

Including a Sephora Case Study

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide

Table of ContentsHow Sephora Saves 150,000 Hours A Year With Mobile Reporting 1

Mobile Reporting for Retail: A Competitive Advantage 7

Visualize KPIs to Improve Retail Performance 10

Mobile Reporting at the Local Store Level 15

Mobile C-Suite Reporting 17

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Sephora Case Study

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How Sephora Saves 150,000 Hours A Year With Mobile Reporting.Sephora is one major retailer that has embraced a mobile-first business model—and seen powerful results.

Founded in 1970, Sephora is a leading perfume and cosmetics chain in France, with a powerful global presence. The retailer has 350 stores and 10,000 personnel in North America alone. Owned by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, the world’s leading luxury goods group, Sephora is regarded as a visionary beauty retailer. The company offers a broad range of classic and emerging brands—along with its own private label. It is known for its unique, open-sell environment, which allows clients to test nearly every product from an in-store display.

The larger the retailer, the more time and energy spent pulling and analyzing data. This was a serious challenge for Sephora, impacting nearly every level of operations. Enter Roambi: the mobile data visualization solution, and a source of truth for Sephora’s most important retail metrics.

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Too Many Platforms & Wasted Time

Like many large retailers, Sephora found that its personnel were spending too much time in back offices buried in complicated spreadsheets, rather than on the floor with customers.

The retailer used multiple data sources—such as POS, traffic counters and client-facing digital systems—many of which often produced conflicting results. But even after reports were accurately produced, executives spent far too much time trying to extract insight from a mess of unwieldy data.

The result: serious inefficiencies in the store’s operations, and a lack of insight that threatened smart, long-term decision-making. The retailer needed a better solution.

“We wanted a solution that would be mobile, simple to navigate, and easy understand. We wanted to avoid the complexity that comes with many BI solutions.”

“Store leaders need all information at a click of a button to make faster decisions and take real-time action.”

“Too much valuable leadership time was being improperly allocated to pulling data from different sources,” said Anthony Pristyak, director of operations for retail analytics at Sephora.”

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Sephora Case Study

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Roambi to the Rescue

Sephora recognized that it needed to consolidate data sources and report from one primary platform. The retailer was researching mobile solutions, and knew it needed a user-friendly tool that could help personnel make fast, real-time decisions. That’s when Sephora met Roambi.

Because Roambi displays work seamlessly with data from a variety of data sources, Sephora was able to implement a single platform that could analyze data in an easier, more visual way than sifting through spreadsheets.

“We needed to make this application the single source of truth when it came to the results,” Pristyak said.

Initially, Roambi piloted in select stores for three months. Team members were trained in person during five regional conferences. The results were so striking, that Roambi was introduced company wide after six months. Roambi is now used by various departments at Sephora, including IT, operations and education, as well as by corporate executives.

“Our CEO and SVP of Retail utilize the Roambi reports when visiting stores, and require store leadership to speak about the metrics displayed directly from the application,” Pristyak explained.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Sephora Case Study

Anthony Pristyak, Director of Store Systems & Analysis, Sephora

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Visualizing Business-Driving KPIs

Sephora primarily uses three of Roambi’s views to visualize its most important data:

Sales Data• Hourly flash sales

• Transactions

• Month-to-date and year-to-date metrics

Activity Data• Stores exchange reports to compare company-wide results

• Traffic

• Inventory

Performance Data • Brand- and merchandise- level information

• Customer Survey Scores

• Employee training status

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Sephora Case Study

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150,000 Additional Hours Devoted to Clients

Since the Roambi rollout, Sephora has documented several benefits.

• 150,000 hours saved. The workload associated with pulling and analyzing data is dramatically reduced. Sephora saved nearly 150,000 hours of workload in 2014, which was previously dedicated to data management.

• Improvedoperationalefficiency.In addition to the 150,000 hours saved, Sephora has allocated the previous payroll spent to client hours.

• 90%reportingfromasinglesource. Sephora estimates that Roambi assists in 90% of reporting and metrics used to manage stores.

• IncreasedROI.Sephora measured ROI through time studies conducted by internal operations. On top of the 150,000 hours saved, Sephora anticipates even more time saved in 2015.

“Store and field leadership absolutely love the application,” Pristyak notes.

“District managers and regional directors have said that it’s the last thing they look at before bed, and the first thing they look at when they wake up.”

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Sephora Case Study

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Sephora is currently sun-setting its legacy reporting tools and plans to rollout Roambi as its only reporting source by the end of 2015. With the power of a mobile visualization tool, the leading beauty retailer is able to consolidate data sources, get personnel out of the back office, and equip its team to make real-time, data-driven decisions.

“Store utilization far exceeded our expectation,” Pristyak said.

“Store leaders are able to make better and faster decisions and communicate clear results and actions to their clients thanks to Roambi.”

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Sephora Case Study

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Mobile Reporting for Retail: A Competitive Advantage.

The digital revolution has created a multitude of challenges and opportunities for the retail industry.

For traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, the proliferation of Internet technology (desktop computing, mobile, cloud, internet connected devices, etc.) has changed the way consumers buy. According to recent U.S. Census data provided by the Department of Commerce, brick-and-mortar stores still account for the majority of retail sales, but that lead is quickly diminishing as shoppers frequently turn to online product channels.

“The growth of ecommerce, which already accounts for about 8% of total retail sales in the U.S., is expected to outpace sales growth at brick-and-mortar stores over the next five years, reaching $370 billion in sales by 2017. By that time, ecommerce is expected to account for a full tenth of all retail sales in the U.S.”

Based on the current rate of growth, Forrester Research predicts that ecommerce will reach $370 billion in 2017:

While this research signals that traditional retailers will need to shift their business model, or face becoming the next dying brand (see sidebar), it doesn’t mean that ecommerce retailers are off the hook.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Mobile Repor t ing for Retai l

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Ecommerce businesses, traditional stores, and companies doing business across diversified channels all face evolving challenges that impact retail revenues, competitive advantage, and overall performance:

• Rapidly changing customer experiences mean consumers are more informed than ever, demanding highly personalized, high-touch experiences. According to Google’s Zero Moment of Truth research, the average consumer takes in more than 10 sources of information before buying. This is more important than ever now that consumers are constantly connected through smartphones. As of August 2014, one-third of consumer packaged goods (CPG) searches were performed on smartphones, according to Google.

• The omnichannel business model creates both challenges and opportunities as customers expect a seamless user experience across all channels and devices, and inventory and logistics executives work to keep up.

• A shift in supply chain demands due to omnichannel customer purchasing behavior means supply chains must accommodate these, and other, changes:

• Fast (if not same-day) shipping.• Inventory availability across all channels.• Online purchase / pickup in-store options.

• The need for better executive reporting remains one of the largest challenges company leaders face. Executives require seamless access to metrics that matter in a real-time, easy-to-understand solution. Access to key data in real time helps them make smarter decisions on enterprise, market and store levels whether they are in the office, in-transit or on-site.

Due to these challenges, typical strategies to fuel retail growth—open new locations, optimize existing ones, and secure better supplier prices—have become much less effective. Companies must evolve to have business operations better meet consumer demand. The new omnichannel, data-driven, digital landscape requires optimization through business intelligence (BI).

But the flood of customer and store data will only take you so far.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Mobile Repor t ing for Retai l

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You Don’t Just Need Data. You Need Decision-Making Tools. The challenges retailers face mean that they need real decision-making insights more than ever. Retailers must improve store performance, but they don’t just need data to do this. They need the right tools to make the best use possible of that data to actually impact key performance indicators.

Massive spreadsheets, complex databases and actual paper datasets take incredible amounts of time, energy and staff power to parse, analyze and interpret. At best, you can extract insights from this data using sheer elbow grease and considerable amount of your time. At worst, you waste valuable resources getting little clarity from your data, or risk the chance of drawing inaccurate conclusions.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Mobile Repor t ing for Retai l

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Why can’t there be a tool that visualizes your data, turning it into stunning and interactive reports, which can easily be navigated with a tap and a swipe on your smartphone or tablet?

As it happens, there is. Mobile visual reporting turns large, unwieldy datasets into interactive visual reports that are available anytime, anywhere. Providing key decision-makers like store managers, operational staff and senior executives with effortless and accurate insight into major KPIs that impact company-wide performance and directly affect revenue.

Mobile visual reporting tools integrate with existing BI databases, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, and other reporting solutions for data analysis that’s fast, simple and intuitive. After all, when you actually understand what you’re looking at, you’re better able to make critical business decisions, identify problem areas and improve store performance.

The best mobile visual reporting tools are optimized for smartphones and tablets first. That means all the actionable reporting you need to make key decisions fits in the palm of your hand, whether you’re out on the floor or traveling between store locations.

How are retailers using mobile reporting to improve store performance? This ebook is based on best practices from more than 30 retail leaders that use Roambi to drive results through mobile reporting. Roambi reports are being used to provide store managers, executives and sales associates with immediate access to the KPIs needed to run their business, allowing each user to make quick decisions to improve operations and spend less time in the back office and more time on the sales floor.

Visualize KPIs to Improve Retail Performance. What’s the first step to improving retail performance with mobile visual reporting? Define your organization’s KPIs. Once you determine the factors that drive business results (not vanity metrics), you can use mobile reporting to better visualize, analyze and share insights.

Start with the following KPIs, and include any others that are important, or unique, to your business model.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Visual ize Your KPIs

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Same-Store Sales

Analyzing same-store sales, the revenue from any retail location open one year or longer, is critical to evaluating future sales growth. You can break this KPI down by many dimensions to learn more about how to profitably expand your business’ locations.

Starbucks offers a perfect example of why accurately evaluating this metric matters. In 2008 and 2009, the company was forced to close hundreds of stores due to rapid expansion, questionable additions of new offerings and lagging consumer confidence. This forced former CEO Howard Schultz to step back into daily operations in an effort to steer the company back on track.

Quickly and easily interpreting same-store sales data across many locations is a challenge. That’s where mobile reporting comes in. It helps leaders figure out which locations are falling behind. And this data travels with executives as they visit prospective new locations, or evaluate existing ones.

In today’s fast-moving landscape, executives don’t have time to spend hours sorting through spreadsheets before deal-making meetings or location performance evaluations. They require a solution that travels with them, simply and powerfully displays useful data, and, most importantly, works without a huge investment of time or energy.

Sales Per Square Foot

Sales per square foot is at its core a simple measure of a store’s overall productivity. This metric shows managers the effect layout and sales staff have on moving product. Increasing revenue from sales per square foot requires store and regional managers to answer key questions, and fully understand their product mix and sales performance:

• Does your product meet the demands of consumers in the region?

• Are staff properly trained?

• Is the product placed in the appropriate space?

• Are we maximizing the use of our space?

These, and other questions, are key drivers of optimized sales performance, but it’s not easy for executives to track the data that provides answers. Especially when that data resides on multiple platforms. Mobile visualization and integration gives managers all the information they need in their pocket, and sets the stage for quick interpretation of sales per square foot averages.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Visual ize Your KPIs

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Margin Per Square Foot

Sales per square foot isn’t the whole story. Margin per square foot, or the profit the company receives per square foot of real estate owned, tells store managers and executives if locations are actually profitable. Reviewing margin per square foot can be a tedious task for business managers, as it is even more detailed than sales per square foot due to the amount of data gathered. It’s also a metric that doesn’t operate well in a vacuum: You’ll want to quickly compare it to other KPIs for the most accurate insights.

Instead of poring over huge sets of historical data in static spreadsheets, data visualization helps retailers quickly and easily digest information with a visually appealing dashboard. The data can then be used as a stand-alone holistic picture of overall performance, or as a tool to compare quarterly, monthly or daily sales versus margin per square foot.

Average Daily Sales and Units Per Transaction (ADS/UPT)

Average daily sales (ADS) and units per transaction (UPT) can be measured across individual stores, employees or the entire enterprise. This data helps retailers understand how much money customers are spending and how many units they are purchasing on each transaction. ADS and UPT can be evaluated daily, monthly or over a longer period of time.

The best data visualization tools give store leaders insightful information to send up the chain of command. Additionally, comparing data across store personnel or several stores in various regions can quickly identify poor performers. Addressing these problem areas increases ADS and UPT, which helps store and regional managers look like sales rock stars.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Visual ize Your KPIs

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Returns

Returns simply totals how many items were returned to a store and refunded for various reasons. This is a key metric used to give a clearer picture of a store’s revenue and margins. This data may be calculated from a point-of-sale system, inventory management system or other data source. With mobile data visualization, you have a solution that can generate a variety of data reports across a single store, groups of stores or an entire enterprise. Intelligent visualizations streamline all of your data into one interface, on one platform that’s accessible in the palm of your hand.

Sales Per Hour

Sales per hour gives retailers a clear indication of sales staff performance and peak sales times. Often, evaluating this metric means taking the time, or hiring someone, to dive into spreadsheets and analyze the data. Mobile reporting does this for you, instantly—giving you more productive selling staff when you truly need it.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Visual ize Your KPIs

Overtime

A measure of how long employees work outside of normal hours, overtime is time typically paid at a premium rate. Knowing this metric, and keeping tabs on it over time, helps store managers optimize staffing schedules and control costs. Mobile reporting instantly shows you how overtime hours and costs breakdown over desired time periods, giving you more insight into (and, as a result, more control over) your store’s operations.

As we have detailed throughout this section, KPIs are a critical piece of the puzzle when optimizing retail sales performance. Improving retail management through mobile reporting is the next piece.

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Footfall

Footfall, the number of people entering a store or shopping area in a given time, is one of the most important keys to brick-and-mortar retail performance. It answers the critical question on retailers’ minds: If there are no increases in sales or profits, was the fall due to lack of conversions or simply a lack of consumer traffic?

Using a mobile data visualization tool to see where footfall is lagging, or where store traffic is high, but sales are low, gives decision makers the information they need to fix problem areas.

Using this intelligence, companies can provide a better customer experience using an omnichannel approach in high-traffic, low-sales stores. The end result being fewer lost sales to online competitors like Amazon.com. Additionally, strategies can be implemented to increase foot traffic at lower-volume stores.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Visual ize Your KPIs

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Mobile Reporting at the Local Store Level.Store managers drive individual location performance, and they understand the complexities of running a smooth, successful operation. From ensuring sales goals are achieved to analyzing trends, creating accurate, detailed reports can be tricky and tedious. Additionally, managers are responsible for communicating daily (sometimes even hourly) sales, and other relevant metrics to employees and decision-makers.

Integrating mobile reporting of the retail floor allows managers, regional directors and other executives to simplify overall performance strategy.

In-store KPIs reported with a mobile-first solution improve brick-and-mortar and ecommerce performance, and give executives an accurate picture of omnichannel operations. This all starts with streamlined intelligence.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Mobile Repor t ing at the Store Level

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A Unified System That Eliminates Inefficiencies

Whether you’re a store manager at a single location, a regional manager responsible for multiple stores, or an executive looking at a bigger piece of the pie, accurate reporting and communication across the board are essential. Mobile reporting allows store managers to create a single system that can be used between employees, various store locations and corporate offices.

Management Anywhere, Anytime

Exceptional store performance falls directly on store managers. To ensure stores perform well, managers need to be on the floor helping customers, guiding employees and managing product lines.

Mobile reporting frees store managers from their desks, so they can focus on productivity, and offers them the option to transparently communicate job tasks and sales expectations to all personnel. Having access to mobile reporting also gives store managers the ability to access reports and visualizations while traveling from location-to-location, without the burden of a laptop or paper binders. This enables shared reports with other store managers and employees from anywhere, no matter how bad the WiFi is.

Smart Resource Allocation

For any business to be successful, whether on a local, regional or company-wide level, management must identify strengths and weaknesses, preferably in real-time. To do this, managers must continually analyze primary KPIs.

With easy access to visual reports of sales trends and patterns, you will be able to enhance your overall understanding of conversion rates to ensure quotas and goals are being achieved.

You’ll also be able to monitor the effectiveness of campaigns and promotions to determine what works well in specific store locations.

Additionally, store managers and sales staff can prevent customers from leaving by using their phone or tablet to instantly check inventory and satisfy needs through an online order, in-store pick-up at another location, or discount on their next purchase.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Mobile Repor t ing at the Store Level

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Mobile C-Suite Reporting.Senior retail executives are busier than ever. They’re tasked to ensure the brand provides the best possible customer experience by leading an omnichannel operations strategy, while working to continually outpace competitors.

Company leaders need an easy, reliable BI solution that provides answers at a glance, because they don’t have time to mine mountains of data.

Data Reporting Does Not Equal Good Visual Reporting

There are a lot of BI providers out there that can pull in data from multiple sources, but a deluge of data does not translate into simple visual reporting. Common problems with BI platforms include:

• Access to lots of data, but not streamlined.

• Poor user interfaces due to the fact that BI providers often develop mobile solutions as an afterthought, with little attention paid to optimizing the user experience.

• Desktop-only solutions provide little value for on-the-go executives.

• Some providers can offer fantastic data organization and visualizations, but without a great mobile option, executives and store managers are chained to their desks. This means lost opportunities and intelligence while out on the sales floor or on the move.

• Higher cost and more complex implementation.

With shareholder pressure, massive retail disruption and ruthless competition, top executives have precious little time to show results. That’s why mobile reporting is the best, fastest solution for executive reporting and decision-making.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Mobile C-Suite Repor t ing

“According to comScore, which uses “time spent” to gauge online consumer retail activity, 56 percent of all time spent on U.S. online retail occurs on a mobile device. Yet a mere 16 percent of companies strongly agree they are completely prepared to meet customers’ mobile expectations, according to a 2014 study by the CMO Council and SAS.”

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What To Look For In A Mobile Solution

With data on hand 24/7 at the office, during travel and at home, executives can make better decisions—but only the right solution will offer fewer costly mistakes from opaque, complicated data systems.

Best-of-breed mobile reporting offers key insights that are:

• Intuitive to understand.

• Comprehensive across channels, product lines and geographical areas.

• Accessible anywhere, across platforms and in real time, thanks to an offline mode that works everywhere.

• Easily, safely shared.

• Not stored in complicated spreadsheets.

• Not stored in different file types or systems.

• Built with enterprise-grade security and functionality if needed.

• Hosted on-premise or in the cloud.

The right mobile solution gives you the power to unify your workforce, empower sales teams and keep players across the organization on the same page. Superior mobile visualization improves entire businesses, offering everyone the ability to understand the data that matters.

Additionally, successful retailers correlate customer face-time with profit. Mobile data reporting allows you to get out from behind your desk and spreadsheets, and get in front of those who keep your business running. The end result is better performance, from the sales floor to the C-suite, and competition crushing, intelligent decisions that are made in minutes—no matter where you are.

Remember, not all visualization tools are created equal. Many BI platforms are great at pulling together different data sets, but only look at visualization (not to mention mobile visualization) as an added benefit.

Look for providers that focus on mobile user experience first, because though the data is important, the ability for leaders to quickly understand it is even more important. Consumers have shifted to the mobile-first mentality, and those retailers that enable a mobile-first business model will lead the industry into a more profitable future.

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide Mobile C-Suite Repor t ing

The Retai ler ’s Per formance Guide

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It’s time to reinvent how your retail organization uses data!You’ve learned how modern retailers like Sephora are using mobile reporting to deliver insights and improve overall store performance.

Get started visualizing your data with Roambi reports.

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