Data Culture enables smart companies to connect with customers for big gains
What do you get when you harness the data your company creates? Better insights into your business and customers, which results in smarter decisions across the board.
But you need the proper tools to make sense of the mountain of data. As Convergence 2015 continues, companies such as AccuWeather, JJ Food Service and Stage Stores, show how they made the climb with Microsoft solutions — and the view from the top is mighty fine.
Delivering data on a global scale with connections in the cloud
AccuWeather is the world’s largest and fastest-growing weather company, serving more than 9.5 billion weather data requests worldwide every day at AccuWeather.com and through AccuWeather apps; 1,700 television, radio and newspaper media outlets; 180,00 websites; and more. AccuWeather also serves 245 of the Fortune 500 companies. With its vast, growing demand, the company needed a better solution for handling its high volume of global requests for the most accurate weather forecasts, current conditions, severe alerts and images.
“As more connected devices came on the market worldwide, we went from 2 million to more than 9.5 billion requests a day within a few years,” says Chris Patti, vice president of Technology at AccuWeather. “Scale became a challenge.”
To improve scalability and reduce costs, AccuWeather moved to the cloud with Microsoft Azure. As a result, the company has the flexibility it needs to adapt faster to changing conditions. It has also gained on-demand scalability, improved access to real-time weather data and cut IT costs by up to 40 percent.
“When you’re talking about potentially life-saving information, you can’t have down time. You can’t have a delay in delivery of that data,” said Ezra Nanes, senior director of Digital Media Product at AccuWeather. “The cloud is the backbone of serving data the way we do — billions of data calls a day. The service has to be on time and accurate. Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure helps us achieve that level of performance.”
Predicting purchases for a smart shopping experience
JJ Food Service distributes food to thousands of customers across the United Kingdom, ranging from restaurants and grocers to schools and football clubs. For this 24/7 company, efficiency is everything, and it welcomes any opportunity to control its costs, maintain its competitive edge and drive effective growth.
More than 10 years ago, the company recognized the efficiencies it could gain from Microsoft Dynamics. Since implementing the solution in 2004, the company has expanded the deployment to cover all aspects of its business.
“We use Microsoft Dynamics AX to run our entire business. It handles our procurement, our sales cycle, our warehouse and inventory management, our financial ledger, our human resources — everything,” said Mushtaque Ahmed, chief operations officer at JJ Food Service. “The flexibility it provides us is critical to our growth, and we could not have achieved it with any other ERP system. Microsoft Dynamics AX was the right decision, and each year we say that with even greater confidence.”
JJ Food Service also realized it was sitting on a ton of customer data that wasn’t being put to good use. That’s when Microsoft Azure Machine Learning entered the picture.
By surfacing Azure Machine Learning data within Microsoft Dynamics AX, JJ Food Service has increased sales and customer satisfaction and plans to streamline back-end operations even more; in just five weeks, the company saw a 3.5 percent increase in internet sales. Being smarter and having information at your fingertips has its benefits, such as knowing what products will be in demand to help you stock warehouses more efficiently.
“I don’t know another food delivery service company that’s doing what we are. Microsoft technology has played a key role,” Ahmed said. “Microsoft Dynamics AX works hard for us, automating processes. But we also need to make these processes intelligent — and that’s where Microsoft Azure Machine Learning is vital.”
Targeted marketing and reporting insights with ease
Representing five retail department store brands with approximately 850 locations across 40 states, Stage Stores needed a new system to support its Marketing department. Its current system made data retrieval time-consuming and difficult. Marketers spent too much valuable time pushing and pulling data for reports. And with the rise of digital media and e-commerce, the legacy system just couldn’t keep up.
“We had a procedure-laden, antiquated system that was difficult to get information from in a functional or presentable format,” said Richard Roark, senior finance manager at Stage Stores. “Getting a report out of the system required exporting and manually parsing columns and columns of data and excessive manual effort.”
The organization needed a cost-effective system that could handle the complexities of a changing retail environment and growth in key areas, measuring ROI and performance of all its marketing campaigns. Stage Stores leaders began the search for a new solution to support and manage marketing activities and related financial functions.
They conducted a thorough evaluation of marketing operations management systems and found they could use Microsoft Dynamics Marketing to seamlessly go from planning to execution to financials. Power BI provided reporting in real time — exactly what they were looking for.
“We’ve seen a significant reduction of time spent in manual processes, and with Power BI, we are getting up to speed with full-format reporting, helping us make smarter decisions,” Roark said. “Like many retailers today, we’re going to a segmented approach where more of our marketing efforts are targeted to the specific shopping patterns of our customers.”
Between ease-of-use, enhanced reporting functions and the campaign-planning capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, Stage Stores has seen significant time saved, more integrated processes, and the capacity for growth and innovation never before possible.
For more on how companies like AccuWeather, JJ Foods and Stage Stores are making their businesses smarter, and to find out how you can take your business further, check out the Convergence 2015 website. For more information on how solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Azure can benefit your business, head to the Microsoft News Center.
Delivering data on a global scale with connections in the cloud
AccuWeather is the world’s largest and fastest-growing weather company, serving more than 9.5 billion weather data requests worldwide every day at AccuWeather.com and through AccuWeather apps; 1,700 television, radio and newspaper media outlets; 180,00 websites; and more. AccuWeather also serves 245 of the Fortune 500 companies. With its vast, growing demand, the company needed a better solution for handling its high volume of global requests for the most accurate weather forecasts, current conditions, severe alerts and images.
“As more connected devices came on the market worldwide, we went from 2 million to more than 9.5 billion requests a day within a few years,” says Chris Patti, vice president of Technology at AccuWeather. “Scale became a challenge.”
To improve scalability and reduce costs, AccuWeather moved to the cloud with Microsoft Azure. As a result, the company has the flexibility it needs to adapt faster to changing conditions. It has also gained on-demand scalability, improved access to real-time weather data and cut IT costs by up to 40 percent.
“When you’re talking about potentially life-saving information, you can’t have down time. You can’t have a delay in delivery of that data,” said Ezra Nanes, senior director of Digital Media Product at AccuWeather. “The cloud is the backbone of serving data the way we do — billions of data calls a day. The service has to be on time and accurate. Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure helps us achieve that level of performance.”
Predicting purchases for a smart shopping experience
JJ Food Service distributes food to thousands of customers across the United Kingdom, ranging from restaurants and grocers to schools and football clubs. For this 24/7 company, efficiency is everything, and it welcomes any opportunity to control its costs, maintain its competitive edge and drive effective growth.
More than 10 years ago, the company recognized the efficiencies it could gain from Microsoft Dynamics. Since implementing the solution in 2004, the company has expanded the deployment to cover all aspects of its business.
“We use Microsoft Dynamics AX to run our entire business. It handles our procurement, our sales cycle, our warehouse and inventory management, our financial ledger, our human resources — everything,” said Mushtaque Ahmed, chief operations officer at JJ Food Service. “The flexibility it provides us is critical to our growth, and we could not have achieved it with any other ERP system. Microsoft Dynamics AX was the right decision, and each year we say that with even greater confidence.”
JJ Food Service also realized it was sitting on a ton of customer data that wasn’t being put to good use. That’s when Microsoft Azure Machine Learning entered the picture.
By surfacing Azure Machine Learning data within Microsoft Dynamics AX, JJ Food Service has increased sales and customer satisfaction and plans to streamline back-end operations even more; in just five weeks, the company saw a 3.5 percent increase in internet sales. Being smarter and having information at your fingertips has its benefits, such as knowing what products will be in demand to help you stock warehouses more efficiently.
“I don’t know another food delivery service company that’s doing what we are. Microsoft technology has played a key role,” Ahmed said. “Microsoft Dynamics AX works hard for us, automating processes. But we also need to make these processes intelligent — and that’s where Microsoft Azure Machine Learning is vital.”
Targeted marketing and reporting insights with ease
Representing five retail department store brands with approximately 850 locations across 40 states, Stage Stores needed a new system to support its Marketing department. Its current system made data retrieval time-consuming and difficult. Marketers spent too much valuable time pushing and pulling data for reports. And with the rise of digital media and e-commerce, the legacy system just couldn’t keep up.
“We had a procedure-laden, antiquated system that was difficult to get information from in a functional or presentable format,” said Richard Roark, senior finance manager at Stage Stores. “Getting a report out of the system required exporting and manually parsing columns and columns of data and excessive manual effort.”
The organization needed a cost-effective system that could handle the complexities of a changing retail environment and growth in key areas, measuring ROI and performance of all its marketing campaigns. Stage Stores leaders began the search for a new solution to support and manage marketing activities and related financial functions.
They conducted a thorough evaluation of marketing operations management systems and found they could use Microsoft Dynamics Marketing to seamlessly go from planning to execution to financials. Power BI provided reporting in real time — exactly what they were looking for.
“We’ve seen a significant reduction of time spent in manual processes, and with Power BI, we are getting up to speed with full-format reporting, helping us make smarter decisions,” Roark said. “Like many retailers today, we’re going to a segmented approach where more of our marketing efforts are targeted to the specific shopping patterns of our customers.”
Between ease-of-use, enhanced reporting functions and the campaign-planning capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, Stage Stores has seen significant time saved, more integrated processes, and the capacity for growth and innovation never before possible.
For more on how companies like AccuWeather, JJ Foods and Stage Stores are making their businesses smarter, and to find out how you can take your business further, check out the Convergence 2015 website. For more information on how solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Azure can benefit your business, head to the Microsoft News Center.
