Left to right: Joe Sperlunto, director of applications; John Sirimis, director of IT infrastructure; Tom Kooser, vice president of Infrastructure Services; and Denis Gingue, chief information officer and senior vice president, all of Charming Shoppes, Inc.
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Charming Shoppes sticks with its long-term strategy even through tough times.
by Jackie Zack
Understanding the value of technology has been a foundation for Charming Shoppes, Inc. Throughout its history, the clothing retailer has focused on this value with substantial investments in its data warehouse, including new applications and upgrades. Even in times of economic turmoil with budgets at their leanest, the company’s leadership understands the importance of a cutting-edge data platform and its value to the business. Thus, continued investment in business intelligence (BI) to efficiently run the company is never compromised.
“The growth of the data platform has been through the collection of more data over the years and, for our most recent upgrade, through some incredibly great pricing offers from Teradata. We have a strong philosophy in keeping fresh in our technology on all platforms, but especially the one that we obviously hold a lot of data in,” says John Sirimis, the company’s director of IT infrastructure.
The initial vision
Charming Shoppes was operating women’s specialty apparel stores under the name Fashion Bug when it first met up with Teradata in 1996. At a time when many established retailers were being forced out of the business, the organization sought a solution to provide more insight to support merchandising and customer activity as part of its survival strategy.
Charming Shoppes’ data warehouse was credited with supporting a financial turnaround in 1997 when the business came from reporting losses to achieving a net income of $19.3 million.
Company leaders sought a premier data warehousing vendor even though only very large retail chains were doing so at that time. In fact, very few mid-market retailers were even considering data warehousing.
The initial implementation focused on integrating data into one repository to enable sales and inventory analysis for merchandising. A year later, customer data was added to engage the marketing department and better understand customers and sales trends. Formerly an organization of disparate vertical systems in which queries could take weeks, Charming Shoppes was soon getting answers to queries in seconds. More importantly, the data warehouse was credited with supporting a financial turnaround in 1997 when the business came from reporting losses to achieving a net income of $19.3 million.
Expanded capabilities
Regardless of the economic environment, the company consistently follows a regimented approach to IT budgeting and project prioritization. A cost-benefit analysis is performed at the beginning of each annual planning cycle to prepare for proposed IT investments. The company has implemented numerous upgrades to its data platform over the years to support growth of additional data requests and e-commerce requirements resulting from acquisitions. (See table.)
Starting with the acquisition of Catherines Plus Sizes in 2000, the company’s rapid expansion continued when it acquired Lane Bryant in 2001. Naturally, additional users, applications and a greater workload followed. Charming Shoppes needed to transition each chain to a unified data platform and BI capabilities. Through a series of upgrades, the company accommodated its growth, smoothed transitions during times of expansion, and enabled efforts to develop a single view of its customers.
“We are seeing tremendous results. We dramatically decreased runtimes, and performance more than doubled in almost every area.”
– John Sirimis, Charming Shoppes
In order to enable new brands with BI tools and access to customer data, the data warehouse also had to grow. After acquiring Lane Bryant, Charming Shoppes implemented an upgrade that nearly doubled the customer service information capacity and dramatically increased the user base for financial, merchandising and customer data.
Tom Kooser, the company’s vice president of Infrastructure Services, notes that Teradata’s proficiency made each upgrade a seamless transition. “There was perfect planning and execution, which resulted in zero downtime and essentially a non-event for the users,” he says.
A ‘refresh’-ing deal
Although the company had achieved record earnings in 2007, the economic crisis in 2008 resulted in decreased consumer spending and a bleak outlook for the retail industry. Facing a need to reduce costs, a data warehouse upgrade seemed virtually impossible. So Charming Shoppes considered extending the current lease or purchasing the leased equipment.
After assessing the company’s situation, Teradata proposed a “refresh deal” that offered new equipment along with a plan to enhance short-term cash flow by eliminating a large portion of the company’s operating expenses through the remainder of 2008 and 2009. The initial period of maintenance and subscriptions were included in the deal so the business would not realize any incremental operating expenses until 2010. Such an arrangement would not only bring immediate business value, it would also increase potential opportunities to support future efforts.
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Eager to take advantage of the opportunity, in June 2008, Charming Shoppes upgraded to a 64-bit Linux operating system and the Teradata Database 12 to generate additional processing power and capacity and enable new business initiatives. “We were able to get into Teradata’s latest and greatest technology, which is a great win for our company from an expense-reduction perspective,” Sirimis says. “It was a huge success. The upgrade was seamless, it was uneventful, it was very well-received, and we are seeing tremendous results. We dramatically decreased runtimes, and performance more than doubled in almost every area.”
As it has in the past, the company saw the value in upgrading to remain competitive amid economic turmoil. “Teradata came to the table in the worst of economic conditions, and they have continued to step up in difficult economic times to help us manage costs while continuing to evolve the business,” says Kooser.
Latest trends
“Teradata provides tremendous value. It is truly the heartbeat of our data warehouse efforts.”
–Denis Gingue, Charming Shoppes
Charming Shoppes now utilizes its data warehouse to support merchandising systems with MicroStrategy reporting tools to run thousands of reports a day. A recent supply chain repository project has enabled the loading of supply chain data into the enterprise data warehouse (EDW) for a more complete view of inventory.
Tracking inventory, sales movement and reporting of data are key benefits of the data warehouse, says Denis Gingue, the company’s chief information officer and senior vice president. “Teradata provides tremendous value,” he says. “It is truly the heartbeat of our data warehouse efforts.”
With data about more than 60 million customers integrated into the EDW, the clothing retailer has continued to focus efforts on micro-merchandising and micro-marketing to better understand customers and distinguish its stores and merchandise accordingly. Using tools such as Teradata Warehouse Miner and SAS business analytics software, Charming Shoppes has developed a single customer view across all channels and brands and has leveraged the data warehouse to develop direct mail and e-mail campaigns specific to individual consumers.
Charming Shoppes continues to realize tremendous value from the merchandising systems. “The data warehouse has become the de facto platform for batch processing,” says Joe Sperlunto, the retailer’s director of applications. “Ten years ago, we did all of our batch processing on the mainframe, and now it is all done on the EDW. Why? Because it is consistent. There are no runtime surprises every two years. Interestingly, no conscious decision was made to do this. It just happened over time.”
Fashion forward
The company continues to look for ways to mine data to better focus on and sell to its customers. “We never want to lose a sale,” says Sirimis. “If a customer wants something from us, whether it’s through e-commerce or bricks and mortar, we want to find a way to get it to them. At the heart of all that is our EDW.”
Evolving to an active data warehouse is also an objective in the near future. This will enable initiatives such as customer lookup at each store to target valued shoppers based on purchase history.
No passing fad
Through more than a decade of upgrades and expansions, Charming Shoppes has grown and enhanced both its product lines and its customer service. By all accounts, the company has an extraordinary, talented core team of people. “Coupled with Teradata’s strong knowledge-sharing emphasis, in part through user group meetings, the business has seen real value from the relationship,” says Sirimis.
“Data is data, but how someone helps you get to the next level is the important part,” he says. “Six or seven upgrades later, we have a really good relationship. Yes, Teradata is a world-class organization with a superior platform, but you also get a sense of trust and respect. From an infrastructure perspective, I have the perfect relationship, and from an application perspective, we have a tool that is always available. In this economy and in this challenging IT world where you have to have an edge, that’s the edge. The EDW is always on.”
Jackie Zack is a freelance business, marketing and technology writer based in Brighton, Mich.
Photography by Michael Pilla