Retailability, a group of retail brands in southern Africa, has harnessed Qlik solutions to enhance data-driven decision-making, streamline reporting and help the group prepare for AI readiness.
Retailability, founded in 1984 and headquartered in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, owns over 600 stores across Southern Africa, including Edgars, Legit and Keedo. With a longstanding partnership with Qlik and its local partner Insight Consulting, the organisation has integrated Qlik solutions to optimise its data landscape, ensuring reliable insights across multiple brands and regions.
Mary-Anne Botha, BI manager at Retailability, emphasises the importance of Qlik in the group’s data journey.
“Retailability has been using Qlik since 2014, with the introduction of QlikView® to enhance data analysis, when we were a smaller operation with just two brands, Style and Beaver Canoe. At that stage, we had experienced challenges around local support, prior to partnering with Qlik, and also wanted a solution that would allow us to essentially ‘spoon-feed’ users to gain an overall view of our data, while also digitising reports.
“Since then, as our business has expanded, Qlik has supported us through major acquisitions, ERP changes and a more advanced data strategy,” she explains.
Retailability’s data landscape grew significantly with the acquisitions of LEGiT in 2017, followed by Edgars, Boardmans and Red Square in 2020. And as the business grew, so too did the complexity of its data. Botha recalls, “When we acquired Edgars, for example, our data tripled overnight. However, pulling through data from new brands was much easier than anticipated because of the solid Qlik foundation we already had in place.”
Over these years, the organisation extended its use of Qlik solutions, with the introduction of Qlik NPrinting for automated reporting in 2019, and the addition of Added Advanced Managed Platform (AMP), combining QlikView and Qlik Sense, in 2021.
“In 2022, we then engaged with Insight Consulting to put a formal data strategy in place, as a critical step towards ensuring Retailability’s readiness for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and to make certain that our data aligns with our business goals.
“As part of this exercise, we found that, on a data maturity scale, parts of the business were ‘data capable’, in particular from the perspective of our data literacy, standardised processes and the use of Qlik for reporting. Overall though, Retailability fell between the ‘data capable’ and ‘data aware’ categories, meaning that there were varying levels of data adoption and user capability, and that greater control over data quality, access and security was required.
“It became clear that, not only did we want to reach our planned AI goals, but we also needed to remove data siloes and ensure that good quality, clean data reached the hands of the right people, at the right time.”
These strategic data goals prompted the company to adopt Qlik Data Integration (QDI), enabling faster and more secure data access while maintaining a single version of the truth.
“QDI was the obvious choice for Retailability, with our existing deep QlikView entrenchment and growing use of Qlik Sense, as it allows for the building of a full-scale data lake; enables the automated building of data warehouses, marts and lakes; permits automatic audit trails; and is easy to enhance.”
According to Botha, key outcomes thus far for Retailability include improved data accessibility, which allows for more frequent app loading, as well as efficiency gains achieved through centralising logic in the data warehouse.
She adds: “Retailability has now been able to set the stage for future development, which includes laying the foundation for our AI initiatives. Looking ahead, Retailability’s future plans include expanding data literacy initiatives across the organisation, building governed data pipelines, and adding new business areas. With Qlik, we’re well-prepared to continue growing and evolving our data strategy.”
Tejas Mehta, senior vice-president and GM: Middle East and Africa at Qlik, comments: “Retailability’s journey exemplifies how a data-driven approach can help to drive business transformation and agility. By leveraging Qlik’s solutions, the group has been able to not only enhance its operational efficiency but also set the stage for future innovations such as AI, highlighting the power of data in shaping business success.
“We are proud to partner with Retailability as the company continues to evolve and reach new heights in its data evolution, setting an example for other forward-thinking organisations across the region.”