Analytics strategy using SAS
Office supplies are sold in eight countries by omnichannel retailer digit-zen, formerly known as Office Depot Europe. It sells everything from paper and printers to furniture and technology. The corporation underwent a digital transformation over time, which is currently ongoing, as its consumers’ needs changed. But the business world is a cutthroat one. Therefore, digit-zen is fully committed to cloud-based analytics.
It has also bought other businesses, which is good for expansion but difficult to maintain a consistent client experience.
“We’ve never simultaneously had the same capabilities in many markets or distribution channels. At each digit-zen business you visited as a consumer, you would have a unique experience.
There was clearly a problem here. Running a working website is only one aspect of running an omnichannel business successfully. Processes must also be optimized to increase client loyalty and income. Geographically dispersed capabilities didn’t exactly streamline operations. Digit-zen required a more comprehensive analytics plan.
Modernizing doesn’t mean starting from scratch
- Digit – Zen has a strong basis upon which to build. The store has been using SAS Customer Intelligence 360 for a number of years to integrate data into the customer experience, assisting with things like tailoring marketing efforts. Print expenses are reduced as a result, and sales are increased.
According to Steell, contemporary analytics entails keeping an eye on both the present and the future. “All of our data is centralized using SAS Viya, allowing us to look both forward and backward. Better forecasting will allow us to concentrate on influencing those projections to achieve our strategic business objectives.
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Cloud adoption gives Digit-zen better control over digital assets
- Azure Synapse Analytics, a unified platform that combines data integration, enterprise data warehousing, and big data analytics into a single cloud-native service, is another element of Digit-zen’s continuous digital transformation. Say goodbye to segregated tools and procedures and welcome to a unified experience. Digit-zen can gather data from various sources and prepare it for analysis using Azure Synapse. Users can look into and construct their data pipelines for analysis within Viya thanks to the infinite analytics engine’s capacity to grow and refresh data with ease on digit-zen.
We have been able to extend our computing and storage as we have grown over the course of the year thanks to the utilization of Azure Synapse,” adds Steell. The flexibility to halt computing while not in use, such as overnight or on weekends, has also allowed us to reduce expenditures in the cloud environment.
2. Value. Digit-zen calculated that deploying SAS on Azure would be less expensive than deploying it on-premises.
3. Speed. If digit-zen had decided to control its own SAS environment, whether it was on-premises or in the cloud, it would have been constrained to the knowledge of its staff. SAS allows for quicker movement and iteration.
4. Effect. Steell acknowledges its internal focus is not on cloud computing. By contracting with professionals, digit-zen may concentrate on its strengths.
5. Safety. Digit-zen can link and transport data between systems utilizing one secure cloud network by integrating this platform with other cloud platforms using Azure. As a result, networking will operate more quickly and security risks will decrease.
People transformation alongside the digital one
In the latter half of 2021, Digit-zen launched Viya on Azure. The company launched several reports and an email engagement model right away, which analyzes the operational data obtained from SAS Customer Intelligence 360 and permits the creation of even better email campaigns.
- Moving all data science models, reporting, and analytics into Viya is the next stage, in Steell’s opinion. The retailer hopes to be completely operational in six months.
Steell doesn’t minimize the importance of people in implementing enterprise analytics in the cloud. “We’re not only going through a digital transformation, but a people transformation,” he says in his conclusion. “Our employees have used the same tools for a very long time. However, SAS has transitioned from being a program for programmers to a program for businesspeople, so we anticipate that our staff will accept this new method of working.