McArthurGlen

The Customer 

Founded in 1993, McArthurGlen Group is Europe’s leading developer and manager of designer outlet shopping centres, and the pioneer of designer outlet retailing in Europe. Headquartered in London, it manages 21 designer outlets across eight countries in the UK, Europe and Canada, with a portfolio spanning more than 600,000 square metres of retail space. Its centres welcome close to 90 million visitors a year and generate around €5.5 billion in annual portfolio sales, featuring a wide range of globally recognised brands including Hugo Boss, COACH and Ralph Lauren. 

The company’s mission is to redefine destination shopping by offering a premium retail experience that combines high-end brands with exceptional customer service. Since opening Europe’s first designer outlet at Cheshire Oaks in 1995, and following its 2013 joint venture with global retail leader Simon Property Group, McArthurGlen has continued to expand across the continent while keeping the shopper experience at the centre of everything it does. As a bricks-and-mortar retailer, its success is closely tied to maintaining strong footfall and increasing the average spend per visitor. 

In an increasingly digital retail environment, that success depends on understanding which brands perform where, and being able to act on it quickly. Across a portfolio of this scale, with dozens of brand partners trading in multiple centres and countries, the ability to see and compare performance consistently is central to how McArthurGlen supports its partners, curates its retail mix and plans for growth. It was this need for sharper, more consistent insight that set the direction for the work with Hitachi Solutions. 

The Challenge

In an increasingly digital retail environment, McArthurGlen recognised the need to become more data-driven in its operations. The company faced several strategic challenges that required deeper insights into brand performance across its portfolio. Key among these were to: 

• Enhance the guest experience 
• Sustain and grow footfall 
• Expand its premium brand offering while maintaining outlet pricing appeal 

The barrier was visibility. Without a unified view of brand performance across locations, it was difficult to make consistent, data-backed decisions that could drive growth and improve operational efficiency. Teams across different centres were, in effect, working without a shared picture of what was actually selling, and where. 

The Solution

To address these challenges, McArthurGlen partnered with Hitachi Solutions to implement a Microsoft Dynamics Customer Engagement (CE) Sales solution. The system aggregates sales data from the various brands operating within McArthurGlen’s centres and compiles it into a comprehensive ranking report. 

The report provides a clear, consistent view of brand performance across all sites, and is reviewed weekly by the business. This regular cadence ensures that decision-makers have timely access to the insights they need to manage brand relationships, optimise the retail mix, and respond quickly to emerging trends. 

In practice, the CE Sales solution has become a critical part of McArthurGlen’s operational toolkit, turning scattered brand sales figures into a single source of truth that the whole business can act on. 

The CE Sales solution has become a critical part of McArthurGlen’s operational toolkit, enabling smarter, faster, and more strategic decision-making.

Why Hitachi Solutions

McArthurGlen needed a partner who could turn fragmented brand sales data into a single, trusted source of truth, and then keep it dependable as the Microsoft platform evolved. Hitachi Solutions delivered a focused Dynamics 365 CE Sales solution built around the weekly reporting rhythm the business actually runs on, and has continued to support it through Microsoft release-wave assessments and the introduction of monitoring tools, so the insight teams rely on stays accurate over time. 

The Benefits 

• Optimised brand portfolio management, with reliable performance data to decide how best to support brand partners and which new brands and categories to target 
• Location-specific performance insights, allowing strategies to be tailored to the unique characteristics and customer behaviours of each centre 
• More targeted, impactful marketing and event planning, aligning campaigns with customer preferences and seasonal trends 
• A standardised reporting framework, so all stakeholders work from the same accurate, up-to-date information, reducing ambiguity and improving collaboration 
• Stronger support for long-term growth, giving decision-makers the data-backed confidence to evaluate expansion of existing sites or the launch of new centres 

What’s Next? 

Looking ahead, McArthurGlen and Hitachi Solutions are continuing their collaboration to further enhance the company’s data capabilities. Since the initial implementation, McArthurGlen has worked with Hitachi’s support services team to assess the impact of the Microsoft release waves and to introduce telemetry and monitoring tools. These enhancements ensure ongoing data accuracy and minimise the risk of system failures, reinforcing the reliability of the solution. 

The future partnership objectives include refining the data strategy, exploring new analytics capabilities, and unlocking even greater value from the insights generated.