Detailresult Group

Detailresult Groep N.V. was formed in 2008 from a merger of the two Dutch supermarket chains DekaMarkt and Dirk van den Broek. Detailresult is a family owned company and is fully financed by its shareholders. The group currently has 198 stores. In 2015, consumer sales were over 2 billion and Detailresult Group employed over 19,000 people.

Customer focused, result oriented and cost conscious are the core values of Detailresult Group. The company is constantly looking for innovative and distinctive supermarket formulas. These have to inspire and surprise customers and offer more benefits such as price-quality ratio, assortment, service and convenience.

Data-driven location selection

The potential sales of a supermarket depend greatly on its location. The potential of a location depends on several factors. Demographics of local residents, the presence of competition and property prices and sales figures of comparable locations, for example. Obviously, the sources for this type of data must provide current and accurate information. In addition, the selected sources must collectively provide a reliable indication of, in this case, location value. Only then can the model properly weight the right factors. The goal is to arrive at a responsible choice of location in a reliable, data-driven manner.

Inergy developed a tool for DetailResult to compare existing locations and to determine the sales potential of new locations. This tool gives branch managers, directors and marketers easy access to customer behavior, sales trends and the efficiency of each (potential) location.

Existing and new locations

The tool shows at a glance the missed potential of all existing locations, namely the difference between the calculated potential and the current turnover. Each branch also receives an efficiency score (turnover divided by potential turnover) so that it is immediately visible which branches are doing well and which are not.

Bart Oprel, CFO of Detailresult Group is excited about the new insights, including for new locations. "With the tool, determining potential sales is a matter of entering the address and the number of square meters. Then the tool calculates the expected turnover for each retail formula. This way I can immediately see which formula has the best effect at a specific location."

Assortment Optimization

For retailers in general - and for supermarkets in particular - it's all about offering the right items, at the right price, matching the own store formula. For DetailResult it is no different. Oprel: "To what extent do products contribute to our sales? Which customer groups are the most important? What does their route look like and what does that mean for the position of products in the store? Answers to such in-depth questions are incredibly valuable."

With the assortment optimization tool developed by Inergy, DetailResult now has access to insights based on both internal and external data. Oprel: "At the moment we do not use customer cards. But it is of course incredibly interesting to know who our customers are and what they need."

Customer profiles based on receipts

That's why the tool also distinguishes between different customer profiles, or shopping trips, based on all the receipts (which contain millions of lines of data). Does a receipt belong to someone who does the weekly big shopping? Or is it someone who comes in for an evening snack? Purely on the basis of the products, the tool can thus make clear which customer groups visit the supermarket. It is then easy to compare them, among themselves or with other branches. Which customer groups contribute most to sales? What are the most important products for them? And why do relatively few people come to a specific store for their weekly shopping?

Oprel is excited about the concrete usability of the tool. "We use the tool every day to support choices with regard to our assortment. For example, it shows that a product that does not seem to be doing well at first is nevertheless important for our range. Because our most important customer group often buys it. Those are insights that just make you happy as a retailer."

Looking Ahead

The tool for location selection and that for assortment optimization can be combined perfectly to make accurate predictions. Oprel says: "It allows us to properly test new articles or innovations by creating a group of test stores and a group of reference stores per cluster. By comparing the impact on sales in the test stores with the sales in the reference stores, we can quickly see what works and what doesn't."

By working in a more data-driven way, DetailResult can reliably predict which products will lead to more purchases within specific customer groups. This could, for example, be a reason to introduce product X in branch A but not in branch B where product Y is much better suited to the main customer group.

Think big, start small

Oprel has found that getting success from data is a matter of starting. "Start with a practical problem and show what the results are. Delineate well what you do and don't want to do. And choose a partner that suits you. Food retailers like us are practical, action-oriented companies. They're not waiting for a partner with lots of strategic views."