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View from the Top - Part
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PROFILE
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Mark Hale
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Company: The Co-operative – Food
Retail.
Interviewee: Mark Hale.
Job Title: Director of IS.
The Subject: The Co-op’s retail
food business is using a central data warehouse and
BI engine to provide vital sales trend and product performance
data on over 2 billion customer shopping baskets daily.
PERSONAL FILE
NAME: Mark Hale.
BACKGROUND: Mark began working
in the Co-operative Group in 1992, following an earlier
career in heavy chemical companies ICI and Shell. At
the Co-operative he has worked in numerous roles in
four areas of the business – Food, Travel, Pharmacy
and Funerals.
Whilst generally working in information
systems – in areas ranging from technical infrastructure
to development and projects – Mark took on the additional
challenge of becoming interim managing director and
director of strategy & business development for the
Co-op’s Travel business.
He is currently director of information
services for the Co-operative Food business and is a
member of the Food Executive and the Co-operative Group
IS leadership team.
Mark has a Masters Degree in ‘Managing
IT in Business’ which he obtained through a part learning
programme with Salford University. Married with two
children, he is a huge sports fan and a passionate Liverpool
FC supporter.
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Q: HOW DO YOU USE YOUR DATA WAREHOUSING
SYSTEM?
A: We have been a Teradata user for about 15 years and have
built up many man years’ experience in using its capabilities
to provide a core element in running our food retail business.
It is part of our central trading systems portfolio and provides
a central repository for all the information collected from
our EPOS (electronic point of sale) systems in our stores.
Currently we hold over 20 billion rows of EPOS data. Every
night we load and process over 25 million rows of data from
our 3,000 stores to produce a range of reports and analysis
on our business performance by the start of the next day.
Therefore our previous day’s sales data is available for users
by 7.00am the next morning.
Sales trends and product category performance is absolutely
key for us – it is crucial to know, as soon as possible, how
well and where products are selling.
The central repository stores details of all the transactions,
which enables ‘basket-level’ analysis. In addition to what
the baskets contain, we also know if the customer was a member,
how the items were paid for, which promotions they triggered,
the promotional discount the customer received and any other
reductions that were given.
This allows us to understand in detail the buying patterns
of our customers and members. We hold data on over 2 billion
customer baskets containing over 12 billion items.
One area of focus is interpreting the performance of a particular
product or category of product. For instance, if we are promoting
say Coca Cola this week, then we can analyse how it is performing
against competing products. It is this sort of product performance
statistic that we use extensively.
We also perform a range of KPI (key performance indicator)
reporting on wastage, leakage, margin reporting and other
key information. For example, we have a KPI for the percentage
of our sales that are made through promotions – we can analyse
whether customers are just buying the special offer without
making any other purchases.
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