A growing specialty retailer had outpaced the capabilities of its home-grown retail solutions. The Company had added new product lines and services over the years, and its current systems could not keep pace with the requirements. After performing an assessment, they concluded that a “buy” option would not fit their needs. The vision was to have one system that would support all the varied product sales, loan servicing, and regulatory requirements. A new data management and real-time data analytic engine was a significant component of the solution.
Impact
The client was a pawn company, and they needed a way to leverage the transaction data they had compiled over time to support customer-facing appraisal and valuation processes. Ideally, when a store associate was writing up a new loan or appraising an item, they would have access to an analytic engine that would provide the most recent value range of similar loans executed over the last six months. The tool would display the highest, lowest, and average loan amount for the item.
Solution
The POS would be the central tool allowing the clerk to access the appraisal data and offer the best value for that item. CG Infinity ’s role was to organize the historical information into multi-dimensional SQL server analytical service cubes and design a service incorporated into the overall Retail architecture, and that could fetch the results in real-time. The process to cleanse, categorize, and map the data into cubes was a significant aspect of the overall effort. Another unique requirement of the development was building an API to eBay and bringing all relevant sell-information for items with no history. This provided relevant information if items had never been assessed or loaned in the system.
Result
Implementing these data analytics services enabled the store associates to make better decisions that directly affected the margins on transactions and significantly reduced appraisal errors. It also reduced training efforts and enabled the company to leverage its store labor for associates that may not have significant appraisal experience.