Lululemon Athletica, one of the world’s largest yoga and athletic wear retailer, chose Power BI as its business intelligence reporting tool.
The Vancouver-based company already operates over 450 stores internationally. Upon establishing itself as a leader in North America, the company plans to expand further across the world.
Their business expansion makes sense considering that the popularity of yoga is rising across the world. According to a survey, the number of Americans practicing yoga increased by over 50 percent between 2012 and 2016. Yoga is already listed among the 10 most popular fitness activities in the world.
The role of advanced analytics
As the business is growing, Lululemon needed to improve its data analytics to make effective data-driven decisions. When it was the time to decide, the company chose Microsoft Power BI, the leader in the BI and analytics world.
Lululemon’s technology executive said the company plans to use Power BI to improve analytics.
“To build the data platform and enable the business with data-driven decisions and insights,” said Leslie Lorenz, the company’s Technology Director for Data and Analytics.
Lorenz added that, first, the company moved its data warehouses to a new data platform. Upon migration, the team adopted Power BI as the enterprise reporting tool.
Before adopting Power BI, the company had difficulties with reporting. The process was delayed, was not scalable and mobile-friendly, and was not cloud-enabled. With Power BI, Lululemon is planning to improve all these things.
The company will provide to all area directors, store and regional managers their own reporting space. This way, they could use the right data at the right time to make better data-driven decisions. This will create near real-time reporting, Lorenz explained.
Leading companies in retail understand that the point of reporting is not reporting. It is the ability to make quick and effective decisions based on real-time data.
Currently, Lululemon is focusing on improving its global presence and hopes Power BI will help the company get to the next level.