Tyco Retail Solutions provides integrated performance and security solutions for retailers. It offers safety and security, loss prevention, inventory intelligence, and traffic intelligence solutions. These innovative store performance solutions provide real-time visibility into inventory and assets, helping improve operations, optimize profitability and create memorable shopper experiences. Tyco’s solutions help define the future of the industry by enabling intelligent decision-making at every level.

Challenge

As cloud-based analytics solutions have become more commonplace, Tyco Retail Solutions began looking at ways to enhance its TrueVUE RFID reporting analytics, which relies largely on static reports. Tyco sought the expertise of a leading analytics team that had deep retail industry experience, a reputation for reliable project management, and advanced skills with Microsoft SQL Server, Power BI, and Azure. They chose Hitachi Solutions for all of these qualities. “The solutions Hitachi Solutions provided made reports and data more accessible,” said Steve Svoboda, director of SW product management, at Tyco Retail Solutions. “We have been eager to unleash the power of this data in a proper analytical context. Having reporting data in a separate data form makes it more useful, accessible, and less intrusive on the application while it’s running and supporting other processes.”

Solution

Hitachi Solutions implemented a Business Intelligence solution in the Cloud using Microsoft’s newest analytics software: Power BI and Azure. Both Hitachi Solutions and Microsoft worked together to provide extensive education and insight for TrueVUE’s foray into Cloud analytics. This helped Tyco formulate its strategy for data management, and to learn the benefits that this type of analytics approach can provide for its customers.

“One of the goals we set out to achieve with this undertaking was to learn what was possible with this type of analytics approach,” Svoboda said. “Both the Hitachi Solutions and Microsoft teams provided a lot of education and insight that helped us formulate a general data management strategy.”

This analytics project helped to instill an awareness at Tyco – providing the company with access to robust tools, straightforward data visualizations, and customizable reports that allowed Tyco to uncover actionable insights and quickly find answers needed to steer its business direction.

Microsoft Power BI and Azure provide flexibility and time-saving benefits. Tyco hopes to leverage benefits such as these to provide self-service reporting capabilities and the ability to manipulate data in ways that are specific to customer’s operational needs.

“The Hitachi Solutions team has been crucial to our success,” said Ruth Tobin, senior product manager at Tyco Retail Solutions. “They were accessible whenever we needed them and were able to come on-site as needed as well. Their focus on our goals enabled us to stay on track and achieve the results for what we were trying to accomplish.”

“The team added tremendous value and helped us gain the insights needed to tap into the potential our data provides,” continued Svoboda. “That has created a floodgate opening experience. Now that we’ve accomplished that step, we know what’s possible moving forward – and that’s largely due to the work Hitachi Solutions did for us.”

Benefits

Flexible, Dynamic Data Model

The powerful analysis available within Microsoft Power BI and Azure allows for drag-and-drop data exploration and interactive reporting. These easy-to-understand visuals give a 360-degree view of data in a simple, familiar user interface. Data hosted in the Cloud is always up-to-date.

Self-Service Reporting for Customers

With Cloud reporting and intelligent data management reporting systems becoming the norm, Tyco sought to leverage cutting-edge technology tools. Hitachi Solutions helped Tyco develop a data management strategy that offers the ability to quickly and easily access the data that is important to its customers.

Increased Understanding of Cloud-Based Business Analytics Solutions

Tyco worked closely with Hitachi Solutions and Microsoft to develop an intelligent data management system that has helped them refine their data analytics strategy.

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