Data Warehouse Helps Business Cope with the Unexpected

The Aubuchon Company, which is the oldest and largest family-owned group of hardware stores in America, wanted to enable each of the store leaders in its 128 retail stores across 10 states to gain insight into their store’s performance and improve it.

The existing store processes made it hard to access and act upon data in a timely manner. Data sources were scattered across the business, and the process of finding and combining data to produce reports was slow and often required manual input.

"We set out to consolidate all our data and deliver clear, relevant, and actionable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to each store, enabling store leaders to monitor performance and drive improvements effectively," says Scott Aubuchon, Vice President of Information Technology.

The project is part of a bigger data warehouse and dashboards initiative designed to bring relevant and actionable data across the company, and display it on tailor-made dashboards.

Analytics Strategies partnered with the Aubuchon team to deliver four critical goals:

Develop the right KPIs (to ensure that they were measuring the things that would deliver the business objectives).
Structure the data in the data warehouse in the right way (to ensure success over the long term).
Stand up the new data warehouse and develop the tools needed to move the data into it.
Bridge between the technical and business sides, to keep them aligned and help them understand the trade-offs and benefits of their decisions.

Our focus on lasting value was important to Aubuchon. “Analytics Strategies understands the importance of building a strong foundation, ensuring the data warehouse is set up correctly from the start. If the data isn’t structured properly from the beginning, you’re setting yourself up for long-term failure," says Scott.

During the project, the team faced two unexpected challenges, each of which added extra complexity. One was Aubuchon’s decision to join the ACE Hardware Cooperative, which required the team to fold in and reconcile a new set of data sources (different promotions, different loyalty programs, websites, etc.).

The second challenge was Aubuchon’s acquisition of 15 new stores, most of which ran point of sale software different to Aubuchon’s. The team had to devise a way to bring data from those systems into Aubuchon’s new data warehouse.

Despite these additional challenges, the team delivered the stores’ dashboard within a year. It is already producing clear business benefits. "Store leaders are able to gain clear insights into sales trends and key revenue drivers, allowing them to focus their efforts where it matters most to enhance performance," says Scott.

Feedback from the store leaders has been enthusiastic. Scott quotes one as saying “We are really loving the new report. Now we can see where to direct our attention daily and weekly by department. It really gets our folks excited in the sections we are doing well in, and demands our attention where we are struggling.”