The North Face Translates Mountains of Data into Meaningful Business Insights for Wholesalers

The North Face, Inc. designs, distributes and retails high tech outdoor apparel and gear, such as jackets, tents, sleeping bags and backpacks. Its products are sold through specialty sporting goods stores in North and South America, Europe and Asia.

With more than 180 namesake stores operated by third parties in Europe and Asia and some 40 company-owned European and US outlet stores, The North Face is known for manufacturing clothing and gear used in extreme outdoor conditions.

Challenge

Three years ago, The North Face Floor Space Management Manager had to rely on manual, Excel-based analysis and reporting processes to do many of the complex, information-intensive tasks associated with her job. Her key responsibility was to assimilate and analyze various types of business data to support sales reps in the field as well as corporate decision makers.

Working with Excel spreadsheets that came in a wide variety of formats was not an easy, efficient or scalable way to complete work. Floor Space Management Managers could receive up to 150 spreadsheets, which made the job very difficult and time consuming. Aggregating it all into something they could use to create a management report would take up to five days.

What The North Face needed was a business intelligence solution that could:

• Quickly aggregate data from Excel spreadsheets into a usable format

• Enable sales reps in the field to access data and do their own analysis anytime, anywhere

• Require little or no involvement from IT to get up and running

• Transform manual processes into business efficiencies

Solution

Automating core, everyday business processes would have a strong impact on improving operations and the bottom line. What The North Face needed was a more efficient way to turn the mountains of data collected into meaningful business insights. Most of the tools evaluated were tied to specific retail processes and reporting.

“I’m not a retailer, I work in wholesale and all the tools I found out there would only pull out retail-specific data,” said the Floor Space Management Manager. "I have 40 different accounts sending me 40 different report formats. I needed a flexible solution that could aggregate disparate information sources so my sales reps could access and use it when they needed it.”

With PivotLink, managers can manipulate and create reports on their own. They can now drill down to various category levels and change the timelines. Typically, retailers don't have that kind of flexibility with reporting or analytics – even if they have web-based reporting tools.

Results

Information from 40 accounts can now be pulled together into an unlimited amount of reports in a fraction of the time it previously took for only 10 accounts. They now also have an accurate historical perspective that can be used to ensure effective product flow year after year.

If you know what sells, you know what to source and what to manufacture – and that creates efficiency across the entire supply chain. PivotLink’s solution has helped The North Face transform core analysis and reporting tasks into an agile, flexible business intelligence process that empowers end users at all levels of the organization.

They can pull information without being limited to a standard retail calendar. They now have flexibility in dates allowing managers to look at specific seasonal product performance like back to school, holiday, early Spring shipment, and more. This is important for The North Face because senior management wants to see those variances in near real-time.

Account reps are very happy with PivotLink and use it constantly. It allows them to access information in a format that is adaptable and easy to put into action, helping them to make more proactive and accurate decisions for their business.

Benefits

• Easy to learn, use and set up new accounts

• Saved hours/days in report creation and dissemination

• Enhanced report accuracy and inventory management

• Streamlined collaboration across the supply chain