Thunderbox turns Bunnings retail data into insights driving business success

By Imogen Pickett | | 9. October 2020

Thunderbox uses the Retail Suppliers solution on the Inphinity app store to analyse point-of-sale data from Bunnings and use it to efficiently manage sales and inventory of their products.

“The Inphinity app is fantastic. The platform is easy to navigate and the customer support has been outstanding. Highly recommend to help drive your business success.”

Ben Kissel, Operations Manager at Thunderbox Industries

Solution overview

Industry
Manufacturing & Wholesale
Focus
Manufacture and distribution to retail
Country
Australia
Challenges
Very limited ability to analyze POS and stock data from retail stores. No easy way to manage stock in individual stores and prevent lost sales
Solution
Retail Suppliers solution on Inphinity app store features connector to Bunnings weekly spreadsheets, transforms the data and provides set of dashboards running on Qlik Sense technology, enabling users to get necessary information quickly and effortlessly
Data Sources
Weekly POS data from Bunnings Warehouse in Excel spreadsheets

Thunderbox Industries

Thunderbox Industries is an Australian owned company that has become over the last 15 years the largest toolbox manufacturer in Australia. Employing over 80 people, all Rhino Branded Toolboxes are proudly made in Australia and are available at Bunnings Warehouse nationally.

Efficiently managing product sales via more than 300 Bunnings stores across Australia and New Zealand requires quick and easy access to stock levels and the ability to analyse sales trends based on point-of-sale data. This is only possible using the best technology. Thunderbox uses a solution for Retail Suppliers on Inphinity app store that leverages the power of the Qlik Sense data analytics platform.

Key Needs

Thunderbox needed an effective way to analyse what has been sold in Bunnings stores over time. The data from Bunnings is being delivered in weekly spreadsheets and the volume of data is too big to analyse in Excel. Four-year history of data represents over 200 spreadsheets, each containing thousands of transactions from the Bunnings stores all over Australia.

This data is critical not only from a sales perspective but also for supply chain and stock management.

The main need was to have the ability to slice & dice the data, drill down to details, and have it available anywhere on a mobile device, ideally without having to go through the costly implementation process.

“Product that is not sitting on the shelves simply can’t be sold. It is our job to make sure all the stores have enough stock and the right amount of stock available, to maximise sales opportunity. Having this data available at our fingertips is absolutely crucial.”

Ben Kissell, Operations Manager at Thunderbox Industries

Advantages

Easy self-service setup at no initial cost
Cloud-based with subscription pricing model
Excellent speed & analytical power thanks to underlying Qlik technology
Available on mobile devices

Solution

Retail Suppliers application is a data analytics solution developed by EMARK Analytics for any businesses selling their products via the retail channel. It is currently complemented with pre-defined data connectors for Bunnings and Mitre-10 in Australia and more retailers are to come. The whole solution is cloud-based with no initial setup cost, there is only the price of the subscription. The TCO is significantly lower than the market-leading competitor.

“The setup was incredibly easy. We put all our spreadsheets on Dropbox, signed-up to Inphinity platform, picked the app we wanted and followed the instructions to feed our data to the dashboards. The result was outstanding! We subscribed right after expiration of trial period for a fraction of competitor’s price.”

Ben Kissell, Operations Manager at Thunderbox Industries

Thunderbox now has insights into sales and inventory available at their fingertips anywhere, anytime. They get answers to questions like:

✓ What’s my best-selling product?
✓ Where is it selling best?
✓ Which stores are out of stock for which products?
✓ What is optimal stock allocation?
✓ What products are NOT being sold & in which stores?
✓ What’s the sales forecast based on historical trend?

Benefits

Prevention of lost sales
Significant time savings
New sales opportunities

Business Value & Benefits

The solution was deployed at the end of 2019 and today, the tool is being used mainly by the operations manager and sales reps who need relevant information in the field. It saves time, improves decision-making, and overall effectivity.

The TCO of market-leading competitor is significantly higher

In addition, being able to look at all historical data from various angles, helps to understand behavioural patterns of consumers and identify new opportunities, which may be critical especially in the uncertain economic situation we’re facing in 2020.

“It saves us tremendous amount of time as the tool quickly responds to applied filters and highlights issues in individual stores. This is very important because we only have limited time in each store to decide on our actions.”

Ben Kissell, Operations Manager at Thunderbox Industries

Technology

The dashboards are part of the Retail Suppliers application deployed on the cloud-based platform Inphinity app. The platform is an ‘app store’ for many other data-analytics solutions. Its main advantage is the simple deployment and the fact that it is supported by the world’s leading data analytics technology Qlik Sense, enabling exceptional data exploration, excellent performance, and unique AI-driven associative insights.

Future

The solution is currently customisable at dashboard level; it means that users can create their own reports using existing data only.

The next step is to bring in internal data from the ERP system, mainly purchase orders and warehouse inventory. This will allow users to analyse Bunnings POS data in a full business context which translates into better insights and faster decision-making.

Try Inphinity Forms now to explore its functions & features, ask your partner or contact us. We will be happy to showcase you the write-back that suits your Qlik and helps your users take action where the data is!