Visual Analytics: the last "Must Have" in the word of fashion retail

The new BI platform, developed by Technology Reply for Versace, provides access to company information in a timely, independent, flexible and powerful way.

Project needs

Versace needed to find the best way of reorganising large amounts of data and provide its users with innovative ways of utilizing the data, to gain the best possible benefit from it.

The new paradigms of advanced analyticsare focused on visual discovery and on gaining insights from data. The “Visual Analytics in Versace” platform represents a step in this direction, enabling users to comprehend complex business phenomena at a glance.

Project outcomes

Versace can now rely on new tools that enable the company to obtain information of certified quality and draw up accurate plans.

Technology Reply has designed Versace’s new enterprise Data Warehouse and its new Enterprise Model.

  • Helping the company worldwide by means of an online service that provides consistent access to information across all business regions and at all organisational levels.

  • “Insights”, which enable users to discover trends and dynamics that are not immediately identifiable, so that new opportunities can be seized.

  • Better control over company processes, helping ensure that business strategies and optimisation initiatives can be pursued.

Solution

A shared Business Information Repository for the whole company makes it possible for any user to identify quantities, attributes and KPIs across the company with ease, and to perform “drill any” and “cross any” analyses in a consistent and user-friendly way.

Thanks to an innovative visual approach to exploring data, it is possible to highlight emerging phenomena, trends and business-critical issues quickly and intuitively within a mass of otherwise uninformative data.

Business users at Versace can now access company information assets for the entire production chain by means of a single common language. What’s more, they have the option of performing analyses that are enriched with multi-area levels of detail.

The back-end component incorporates data from inbound systems within the new enterprise Data Warehouse by means of Oracle Data Integrator 12c technology; the solution is seamlessly integrated with the main source systems typical of the field (such as Oracle XStore, Stealth).

At the front-end level, an Enterprise Business Information Model was developed on the basis of the Oracle Business Intelligence platform and Oracle Data Visualization 12c.

The design and build of the Data Warehouse and the new Enterprise Model involved the following activities:

  • The acquisition of information assets from heterogeneous source systems, both internal and external, using Oracle Data Integrator 12c, the market-leading ETL tool.

  • Modelling the various levels of data acquisition, processing, logging and presentation to provide the best possible configuration at the Oracle Business Intelligence and Oracle Data Visualization 12c system front end.

  • Implementing ETL processes and ad hoc structures capable of supporting front-end solutions focused on flexible and interactive reporting and self-service analysis.

  • Collecting, in a single cross-functional repository, all the information needed to facilitate the evaluation and analysis of the main phenomena, with historical depth for comparative analysis and enabling cross-area analysis through a single certified application.

  • Ensuring that data can be updated in “near real time” and profiling users so that data can be utilised on the basis of the different business users’ areas of competence.

  • Improving user experience, through the creation of user-friendly dashboards that facilitate access to company information assets in a rapid and intuitive manner.

  • Delivering reports targeted at different organisational levels, through the composition of scheduled books in accordance with specific customer requirements.

  • Organising training courses for users and IT staff, to disseminate and share best practices and the methods for using the front-end tools.

Functional Areas

In the fashion and retail world, the main functional areas identified are: Retail Sales, Orders & Invoicing and Production.

Each functional module has been designed to facilitate use by means of data exploration tools, traditional navigation methods, and a purely visual search mode.

In order to support company decision-making processes, each functional area has been designed to be utilised by several departments:

  • Merchandising & Buying

  • Production & Logistics

  • Customer Service & Order Management

  • Controlling

Thanks to the role-based profiling system in place, each user can access the data set that corresponds to his or her area of competence, both when exploring the data and when consulting institutional reports.

In order to assist business users in carrying out visual analyses, advanced modelling techniques are used that allow for the creation of:

  • Like-for-like / “incomparable” analyses, based on daily updates

  • Comparative analyses with the help of predefined metrics, based on temporal comparisons (year over year, month to date) or seasonal comparisons (previous seasons)

  • Historical performance with "as is" or "as was” details)

In order to aid the user in reading monetary amounts and to speed up conversion operations, each functional area provides for:

  • The management of metrics by conversion rate and with both default and dynamic values

  • Automatic multi-currency management

Versace

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Founded in 1978 in Milan, Gianni Versace SpA is one of the leading international fashion design houses and is a symbol of Italian luxury and lifestyle worldwide. The company designs, manufactures, distributes and retails fashion and lifestyle products, including haute couture, prêt-à-porter, accessories, jewellery, watches, eyewear, fragrances and home furnishings, all bearing the distinctive Medusa logo.

The Versace Group distributes its products through a worldwide D.O.S network, which includes over 200 boutiques in the principal cities and over 1,500 distributors worldwide.