‘All knowledge is power’, said someone sensible, once*, which UK Unleashed customers have been discovering afresh this month. With the powerful Vision business intelligence module in their hands they’ve been slicing and dicing their own data to make better-informed, more strategic business decisions.
We caught up with Ben Shouler, the co-founder and Company Director of Living Planet Distribution, to hear how he’s been using the tool.
BI Vision supports strategic decision-making with real-time data analysis.
And that level of visibility has been especially useful in the unusual last few months, says Ben.
“I could see really quickly that our sales in central London have dropped, but then our eCommerce has gone up by almost the same amount. So it shows that you’ve not really lost the customers, but they're using different places.
“Breaking down our sales data based on our sales rep and territory – being able to see the percentage breakdowns – all this is really helpful. That’s one of my favourite things about Unleashed in general: being able to see really accurate margins for products. And that really helps with making decisions about promotions that you run.”
Data-based decisions in a complex world
Living Planet distributes premium natural health supplements and organic skin and bodycare to over 400 stores across the UK and Ireland – and many more in the EU. They also manufacture and market their own ranges, and own multiple brands. From a sales perspective it’s a complex operation that Ben has been analysing this week with BI Vision."That’s one of my favourite things about Unleashed: being able to see really accurate margins for products" – Ben Shouler, Living Planet Distribution“I like the interface,” he told us when we caught up over the phone. “In the past we were using accountancy software, which is quite limited with its categorisation of products. As a distributor with eight brands now and another one about to launch, if you’re not able to see the breakdown of the brand data and the individual SKU data it’s very difficult to be more strategic. So that’s something that's been really helpful.”
BI Vision supports strategic decision-making with real-time data analysis.
And that level of visibility has been especially useful in the unusual last few months, says Ben.
“I could see really quickly that our sales in central London have dropped, but then our eCommerce has gone up by almost the same amount. So it shows that you’ve not really lost the customers, but they're using different places.
“Breaking down our sales data based on our sales rep and territory – being able to see the percentage breakdowns – all this is really helpful. That’s one of my favourite things about Unleashed in general: being able to see really accurate margins for products. And that really helps with making decisions about promotions that you run.”
A coffee for the BI Vision-aries...
Living Planet are just one of the early adopters of BI Vision who’ve been using its insights in their daily work. More and more Unleashed customers rely on it for strategic decision-making every day – so we thought a little something to pep up these BI Vision-aries would be nice. Every week in August, Volcano Coffee Works are sending a gift pack of eco-friendly coffee capsules to top the ten BI Vision users. So congrats to the following companies – your gift pack is on its way:- Rotech Machines
- Applied Nutrition
- Cemon Homeopathics
- 440 Distribution
- WWS Ireland
- Moju
- Parksafe Automotive
- Orangetek
- Abbey Distribution
- Living Planet
