EXASOL and SHS VIVEON acquire the Kiel-based retail firm coop eG as a new client
Nuremberg, 21 March 2012 – EXASOL AG and its partner, the business and IT service provider SHS VIVEON have acquired Kiel-based coop eG as a new client. coop has decided to introduce an analysis and reporting solution from these two specialists that builds on high-performance data warehouse architecture and creates significant competitive advantages for the company. In the future, intelligent data analyses will allow the retailer to be able to better understand its customers’ buying habits. In addition to precise efficiency controls, the range can be optimised and the use of advertising materials can be even more effectively evaluated and controlled.
coop is Germany’s largest consumer cooperative in the food retail industry and supplies about 210 sky supermarkets, plaza self service department stores and plaza building and gardening centres, mainly in Northern Germany.
A system that can be easily scaled and integrated
As the old database solution caused performance and operational issues, the IT department at coop Kiel was looking for a high-performance alternative which would be highly scalable and easy to integrate. From March 2012 the business intelligence solution from SHS VIVEON and EXASOL will be gradually introduced at coop. This involves bringing data from the various operating systems into an integrated data warehouse system. For data modelling, SHS VIVEON uses the DWH industry data model for the retail industry from the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS). EXASOL will make this data available using the high-performance database EXASolution for analytical enquiries and reports. Loading and transforming the data in the data warehouse and technical versioning of the master data will be carried out via the ETL tool Pentaho Data Integration.
Cost reductions via precise evaluations
In the future, coop will be able to carry out fine-grained customer and revenue structure analyses based on receipt data. Thanks to the fast, precise evaluation of inventory turnover and compound effects, the marketing and administration costs at coop can be reduced. Logistical processing times and order lead times will be shortened while various ranges of goods will be able to be tailored towards the client leading to an increase in sales.
“The old system required an enormous amount of maintenance with regard to the data to be evaluated,” says Thorsten Tygges, board member at coop eG. “Therefore we were looking for a high-performance solution requiring a low amount of maintenance that could be extended at any time.” EXASOL and its partner SHS VIVEON provided the best value for money. The complete solution from the two specialists can be scaled almost linearly.
“We can carry out reports and analyses that allow us to make precise predictions regarding customers’ shopping baskets and the compound effects,” Tygges continues. “Using this information we can take targeted action for improved sales approaches. We can determine when to introduce a product affordably and in good time. Moreover we can create precise sales prognoses and thus efficiently manage our sales activities.”
“We are of course delighted to have acquired coop Kiel as a new client,” says Steffen Weissbarth, CEO of EXASOL AG. “For our small company, coop is the first retail client to use our analytical database technology. With our strong partner SHS VIVEON we can provide coop with unique synergies from expertise, innovation and services,” continues Weissbarth.
A complete solution from one source
The business intelligence solution can be fully integrated into the coop IT infrastructure. It requires no special hardware or tuning and can also grow with the requirements of the company without any need to invest heavily in the IT infrastructure.
EXASOL AG, based in Nuremberg, develops and markets the high-performance database EXASolution, based on Loading...in-memory technology, which was designed specifically for enterprise warehouse applications and business intelligence solutions. This allows very large volumes of data to be analysed and evaluated in the shortest space of time. Thanks to the high performance and low administrative maintenance, EXASolution supports businesses not just with valuable decision-making fundamentals from their data, but also by reducing the total cost of ownership. In April 2011 EXASOL AG was named by Gartner as a “Cool Vendor” in the category Data Management and Integration 2011. In 2012 the solution was included in the Magic Quadrant “Data Warehouse Database Management Systems”.
About coop eG
coop, that was founded in 1899 as a consumer cooperative is the largest food retailer in Northern Germany.
Distribution channels:
– Sky: coop is represented in Northern Germany in the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hamburg and the northern parts of Lower Saxony and Brandenburg via its chain of “Sky” supermarkets. It carries a range of over 12,000 items 500 of which are offered at low, discounter-like prices.
– Plaza: In Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Lower Saxony coop runs self-service hypermarkets under the name “Plaza”. Plaza offers a range of up to 70,000 items. The stores feature a full range of supermarket goods as well as drugstore items, household goods, clothing, sports and leisure wear and equipment, DIY goods, motoring accessories, electrical goods and small items of furniture. In Kiel, Lübeck and Schwerin, Plaza also runs its own filling stations which are particularly affordable.
-Landklasse: Under the name of „Landklasse“ coop offers high-quality meat products from selected regional manu-facturers at the meat counters of „Sky“ supermarkets. Therefor it has been rewarded several times by the “CMA” and the Chamber of Agriculture for Schleswig-Holstein. It is also the first fresh meat available at meat counters that has been rewarded by the DLG in Germany and has won a gold medal. Since 1992 „Landklasse“ stands for meat, that meets exceptionally high standards.
– Delikatessa Marina: coop also runs fish businesses at the Plaza self service department stores and fish restaurants under the name “Delikatessa Marina”.
– Unser Norden: Via the regional brand of “Unser Norden” (“Our North”) coop sells about 600 groceries, all produced, refined or processed by regional manufactures from the north of Germany.
“North” covers the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony and the city states of Hamburg, Bremen and Berlin. The range of products is completed with about 100 non-food items like drapery, hardware and decorations, but not all of those local products. Also, a chain of country bakers has been newly developed, at the moment there are already 20 branches.
The sales territory covers Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hamburg and the northern parts of Lower Saxony and Brandenburg. It is supplied by two centres of distribution, located in Kiel and Güstrow.
The 39 supermarkets in the south of the country were sold to REWE in 2009. In the food retail industry, coop has a retail area of around 300,000 m² and an annual turnover of 1.3 billion euros.
About SHS VIVEON AG
SHS VIVEON AG is an internationally operative business and IT solution provider for customer management solutions. The company provides leading expertise in customer value and customer risk management. Additional areas of expertise include customer analytics, corporate performance management as well as business intelligence and data warehousing.
SHS VIVEON AG, based in Munich, is listed in the M:access of the Munich stock exchange and is represented by two subsidiaries in six locations in three European countries: GUARDEAN GmbH in Germany and SHS VIVEON Schweiz AG in Switzerland. With around 200 members of staff and more than 200 clients in 15 countries, SHS VIVEON is one of Europe’s leading providers of customer management.
Clients of SHS VIVEON include many renowned companies from the financial services sector, industry, retail and the telecommunications branches: BayWa, BMW Financial Services, BP, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Telekom, Ingram Micro, Kabel Deutschland RaabKarcher, o2 Deutschland, Orange, Shell, SüdLeasing, Vodafone and Zalando.
For more information, please visit:
www.The-Customer-Management-Company.com
About EXASOL AG
EXASOL AG, based in Nuremberg in Germany, develops a data management system that enables the rapid analysis and evaluation of data. By implementing the solution from EXASOL, business processes are optimised and secure foundations for decision-making are generated, which give companies a sustainable competitive edge.
EXASolution is a relational high-performance database that was specifically developed for enterprise warehouse applications and business intelligence solutions. The database is utilised by companies of all industry sectors for time-critical analyses, comprehensive data research, planning or reporting. The integration of geodata introduces an additional analysis dimension that allows for even more efficient analyses. The database can be integrated easily into existing IT infrastructures and requires a minimal amount of administrative maintenance, while ensuring low investment and operation costs (TCO).
EXASolution is available under the name EXACloud as well as data warehousing as a service. This highly efficient data management solution allows EXASOL customers to benefit from complete data access at any time and a transparent price model.
Companies such as XING, Sony Music Entertainment, Olympus, IMS Health, Semikron, intelliAd, Ratepay, Webtrekk and xplosion rely on EXASOL’s “made in Germany” technology. For further information, visitwww.EXASOL.com, follow us on twitter or join us on facebook.