5 Startup Success Stories that Used BI to Thrive

Big data is a digital roadmap to long-term success. This holds true across all sectors, from B2C to B2B industries. 83% of companies, in fact, believe that business intelligence (BI) for big data analytics makes their products and services more profitable. Still not convinced? Okay, here are five real-life stories from actual organizations that implemented BI with tremendous results.

Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill

Rubio’s is a Mexican restaurant chain based on Baja-inspired cuisine. Paul Nishiyama serves as the franchise’s Director of IT. How has he used BI? He credits BI and predictive analytics for producing more robust performance and financial reports. He goes on to say that without a BI system, producing the reports would be a lengthy and cumbersome process.

Both regional and district managers are also benefitting, creating queries and reviewing standard reports. This enables managers to quickly evaluate staffing levels and make important decisions, such as whether to hire additional guest service agents, or cut back on hiring at underperforming restaurants. In addition, managers can also evaluate the cost of individual ingredients and adjust menu prices accordingly.

Chase-Pitkin Home and Garden

Chase-Pitkin Home and Garden is a local hardware store based in New York. The company used BI to address the issue of “shrinkage.” This is where goods are ordered from the supplier but disappear from the store without record of being purchased.

The company’s CIO, Christopher Dorsey, used BI to record point-of-sales data. The data revealed that most of the items going missing were handheld power tools, which were vulnerable to theft due to its small size. With the data, Dorsey was able to reposition these items so that staff can better keep an eye on them. This adjustment resulted in a $200,000 savings in inventory lost in the first year.

FruitGuys

FruitGuys is a San Francisco company that delivers fresh fruit to the doorstep of its customers. Its customer service manager Hannah Aguilar-Mata, says that the transition to BI software allowed for smoother business tracking, including who is doing what and how long deliveries are taking. Aguilar-Mata sends out correspondences to customers asking for their input. The data is collected, sorted by a BI tool, and examined by the customer service team.

The company’s drivers that make the delivery also collect feedback as they’re making the drop-off. The data is immediately uploaded to the BI, where it’s instantly reviewed. This way, if a customer has an issue with the quality of the fruits, for example, guest service associates can respond within an hour.

Edwards Andrews Homes

This is a home design company. Its senior vice president of marketing, Caroline Simmel, made the decision to integrate BI into its company operations. Customers are given a style quiz where they are shown several remodeled interiors that they then rate. The data is fed into the BI tool to yield a design profile for the individual clients. Based on this profile, the company can make recommendations for customers unsure about which designs to go with. This has led to a reduction in service times, not to mention a decrease in customers changing their minds last minute, which results in wasted labor.

SUNRx

This pharmacy technology company used BI to keep track of industry specific key performance indicators. This included various financial metrics like account receivables and, as well as customer prescription rejection rate. BI implementation also allowed SUNRx to perform online analytical processing (OLAP), a skill that would normally have to be performed manually by a separate IT team. The higher ups at SUNRx also complemented the BI system’s flexible licensing terms, enabling the company to easily scale up or down depending on their needs at a given moment.

Conclusion: These stories are based on real companies that are evolving with the rise of big data. Of course, BI integration is no guarantee of success, but it does give you an enormous edge by leveraging the power of your in-house data.