* CompUSA Inc. has undergone several name and operational transformations since it launched its business in 1984 as Soft Warehouse in Dallas, Texas.
* The Mexican retail company Grupo Sanborns then acquired CompUSA in March 2000.
* They are the largest computer retailer in North America, with 225 computer superstores in 84 metropolitan market and a virtual computer superstore on its corporate Web site for online shoppers around the world.
* As with classic retail businesses, CompUSA measures its performance by monitoring sales, margins and profitability.
* The company differentiates itself from its competitors, by focusing exclusively on selling technology products and services.
Business Requirements
* Reports provided limited information, such as sales, margin, and quantity of sell-through, for each product sold on the previous day for each store.
* The legacy system could not provide details about the daily activities that affect a store’s performance, such as discretionary discounting at each store, missed opportunities to sell extended warranties, or a cashier’s failure to capture complete warranty information. Managers needed access to this type of information so that they could implement corrective measures and monitor the results.
* A traditional point-of-sale system is oriented around discrete product sales, so it cannot capture the type of sales information applicable to training services. As a result, separate systems were built or purchased for training and each of the other service businesses, which in some cases varied from store to store.
* CompUSA needed to centrally manage these information systems and to bring the data from these systems together to get one view of a customer.
* At each level, the scope of information visible to the business user would change according to the user’s role in the organization.
The Solution....
