Elie Tahari Ltd. And Business Intelligence Elie

Elie Tahari Ltd. And Business Intelligence

Elie Tahari Ltd. is a high end women's apparel designer and retailer. Launched in 1974, the company helped to revolutionize the store-within-a-store concept. The privately held retailer merchandizes its collection in dedicated space in retail chains such as Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. The company has just over 800 employees with 22 retail locations, along with is clothing in 600 free-standing boutiques and high-end department stores. The company's merchandise is available in 40 countries around the world (Laskowski, 2011).

The company depended on its information systems to run its operations and to position it to make the most of new opportunities to expand business. Prior to the implementation of their new system, Tahari was limited by the quality of the sales data they received; the data was frequently incomplete, redundant or inconsistent. Tahari needed two employees working full-time for two days each week to analyze and compile the data they received. Typically, the resulting sales reports were not available for managers until midweek. As a result, Tahari had little time to react to the information provided and use it to improve that week's sales.

To improve their operations, Tahari's vice president Mickey Klein developed a system for collecting sales data from retailers and delivering on demand reports that provided updated information on sales and inventory. When combined with transaction data from department store partners and their individual stores, Tahari was able to merge that data with information from their shipment and inventory files to create a comprehensive database. In keeping with its reputation as an innovator, Tahari implemented a data warehousing application to provide them with self-service reports in orders, inventory, sales, and finance running on a modern IT infrastructure.

Statement of the Problem

Tahari received operational data from a number of sources - department stores, company stores and internal reports -- in a variety of formats, Excel spreadsheets and EDI documents. The systems were not well integrated, each with its own standards, reports and user interfaces. Delays caused by manual compilation of data caused the sales staff to respond to trends slowly, and communication with the supply chain lagged as well (Laskowski, 2011).

Tahari needed a tool to maintain its speed to market that allowed company decision makers to receive and process information with speed and efficiency. They also needed a centralized system that could store all their information in one repository that provided easy access. The company was looking for easier, electronic distribution of data to help improve its merchandise decisions and display configurations within retail locations and also its store-within-a-store concepts (Information Builders, 2004). In the words of Tahari's president of retail operations, Ofer J. Carmel, "We needed a tool that could help our managers make the right decisions. We required reliable user-friendly software that could immediately present data on one screen" (Amato-McCoy, 2004, p.1.)

Tahari encountered operating inefficiencies, increased inventory costs, supply chain management issues, lost sales, delays in time-to-market, and increased labor costs because of problems associated with their piecemeal, labor intensive methods of data collection and analysis.

Proposing a Solution

Tahari's solution required a business intelligence system that streamlined their decision-making process and enabled strategic decisions. By implementing data warehousing, Tahari used a technology that extracted, transformed, processed and presented data to provide them with strategic information for their organizational business intelligence applications (Bara, Botha, Diaconita, Lungu, Velicanu & Velicanu, 2009).

As part of their integrated business intelligence solution, Tahari selected WebFOCUS, to provide enterprise reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, information delivery and management and flexible development. Tahari also used an IBM AS/400 host to run an industry standard operations package called Apparel Computer Systems to supply operational data to WebFOCUS. The new system achieved a 15% reduction in a key shipping delivery process, improved visibility into production and sales activity and simplified information retrieval operations (Baum, 2003).

Tahari vice president Mickey Klein discussed the new system's benefits, saying "By having timely access to data we can focus on product, understand what we are selling to customers and gain feedback about how our lines are selling. If we need something fresher on the selling floor, we can analyze our data and quickly make room for items that will provide a better selling rate" (Amato-McCoy, 2004, p.1.)