The Finnish operations of The Body Shop International, which offers high quality and ethically produced cosmetics, was one of the first customers of Zoined. They took Zoined Retail Analytics service into use in 2013 and have been truly satisfied with it since.
“When I used the service for the first time, I was most surprised with how fast it was. Big reports which earlier took several minutes to query now finished in a second”, says The Body Shop Area Manager Maarit Kuisma. The service was tested at first in a pilot, and now it has developed into such an important information source that according to Kuisma, the whole organization would end up in chaos without Zoined.
Working as an Area Manager of The Body Shop includes very versatile tasks and requires knowledge of both human nature and hard facts. According to Maarit Kuisma, in order to succeed as Area Manager the most important thing is an excellent team around you. For that you need successful recruiting and the attitude to support the success of your employees.
In the development discussions with the staff Kuisma shows from Zoined service graphs that present how the employee has performed during the last year. The data helps also in setting the personal targets for the upcoming months. When getting ready for the development discussions she doesn’t have to prepare reports in advance nor print any papers. The view in Zoined can be quickly changed between for example sales, average purchase value, certain product group or a time series with only one click.
In addition to the field work Kuisma is also a member of the marketing group of The Body Shop Finland. The actual sales from last week are discussed in weekly meetings and the next steps are planned. “On the screen in the meetings we see Zoined. Everyone stares at the graphs and we drill down to explore the reasons behind the deviations in the sales”, she describes. Fast reaction speed is the key, and if the campaign doesn’t work as planned we might change it already after one week. Also if the campaign has started better than expected we can still order more products in time.
So, Zoined helps Kuisma with follow-up of single sales persons, her own region with 14 stores as well as analysing the whole Finland operations. Normally she starts her day by going through the yesterday’s performance of her own stores and checking how single campaign products have sold.
“We have saved time both during meetings and from getting ready for them. Following the campaigns is easy. Performance is now transparent”, Kuisma lists. Even though the service has expanded with lots of new features during these two years she thinks that the ease of use has remained. “Getting familiar with the service initially took four hours. After that I’ve always got enough information out of Zoined.”
Satisfied customers mean everything to Zoined and the commended rating from The Body Shop is extremely important. “I recommend Zoined for all chains and all levels of the organization, including the sales person level. The transparency Zoined brings is a very positive thing”, Maarit Kuisma summarizes her experience as a customer.