PivotLink | Case Study

Car Toys is the largest independent retailer of mobile entertainment and wireless phones in the nation. They have built their business on offering the widest selection, expert advice, and outstanding customer service. Car Toys has more than 1,200 employees in 52 locations throughout Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Texas.

Challenge

According to the company’s director of information systems at the time, Stefan Nellenbach, Car Toys managers and sales staff "wanted to take sales data and flip it every which way and backward to drive the business." At the time, however, there was no satisfactory way to meet everyone's reporting needs.

Solution

The company went looking for a business intelligence solution, and Nellenbach chose PivotLink because it could handle huge sets of data and deliver information quickly. Nellenbach said, "We didn't want a solution that built static data cubes from the data we loaded. The fact that PivotLink could do it on the fly was amazing." Years later, when CIO Tom Lockwood joined the company, Car Toys expanded its use of the PivotLink system to more than 125 sales, merchandising, and administrative employees, who use the system on a daily basis.

Results

Flexible analytics that meet the needs of all business users, including executives, sales and regional managers, sales staff, and merchandising clerks
Reports customizable by business users on the fly
No longer a need for IT to develop time-consuming, custom SQL reports
Integration of data from multiple systems, including GERS point-of-sale, Oracle financial, and ADP HR
Ability to do budget analysis, eliminating the need to invest in more Oracle licenses

SmartWool
"The key factor that drove us to PivotLink's solution was usability. We needed a solution that would easily allow all levels of management, from president to sales managers, access to reports and ad-hoc queries."
- Kevin Lotz, IT Director

Anchor Blue
"There is a tremendous amount of data and it is important to be able to crunch that data all the way down to the item level and all the way up to class level. We never had that kind of visibility before."
- Harrison Kang, IT Director
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Car Toys
"PivotLink is terrific, so flexible. People can use it in whatever way they want. A merchandising clerk may only need it to check one thing a day; the senior VP of merchandising, who does heavy analysis, might look at inventory turns, inventory levels, and gross margin return on investments; and our replenishment team uses PivotLink to track sales trends and demand so they can make better buying decisions."
- Tom Lockwood, CIO
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