VFB Group relies on Qlik to improve its customer experience

Ranked among the leaders of the lingerie market, VFB Group has been showcasing its expertise in women’s corsetry for more than 30 years. Through its complementary brands (Vanity Fair, Lou, Variance, Bestform, Gemma, Belcor and Cherry Beach), the group covers a broad spectrum, from mass-market retail to luxury, and appeals to a wide range of women around the world. To remain a major player in its industry, the group is betting on a data-driven strategy and a Business Intelligence solution to analyze all the data collected by its e-commerce platform. Here is a look at what lies beneath this ambitious project led by Synolia with Qlik.

The VFB brief

A BI solution to centralize data from a multisite e-commerce platform

In 2017, VFB Group overhauled its entire digital strategy with an ambitious e-commerce roadmap: every site would be completely redesigned and equipped with the latest technology solutions, including a high-performance Business Intelligence solution.

Synolia x Qlik

The Magento and Akeneo solutions were selected and implemented by Synolia on the group’s e-commerce platform. For Business Intelligence, the Synolia x Qlik duo got the nod.

For VFB, the next step was to optimize its ability to analyze the wealth of data collected by these various tools.

Data visualization to improve the customer experience

Customer experience is a key way to stand out, engage customers and build loyalty. VFB Group was therefore looking for a tool that would help it understand its customers and personalize each one’s journey. Specifically, the group wanted to deepen its customer knowledge to meet its shoppers’ expectations, both current and future: purchase history and frequency, preferences, pain points, past incidents, current and upcoming expectations, reactions to promotional campaigns… VFB’s goal was to fine-tune its product marketing and offer personalized interactions to each of its customers. To meet this need, Qlik stood out as the optimal solution. Qlik consolidates all the data from Magento, Google Analytics and Google Ads and delivers the key indicators needed to manage the business. The goal is to provide a precise view and almost endless analysis possibilities.

A team won over by Qlik

The rollout of Qlik in VFB Group’s digital department was very well received. Employees were delighted to leave their Excel spreadsheets behind. After a few days getting familiar with the tool, the reactions were unanimous.

Time savings, greater visibility, faster decision-making: the benefits are indisputable. Thanks to Qlik’s ease of use, cross-referenced data can be put to work immediately. Quick access to the key indicators highlights both brand-specific issues and those common to the entire portfolio, all very quickly. Information is gathered, transformed and structured. Visuals produced in just a few clicks give internal teams unprecedented visibility. The teams now spend their time analyzing, making decisions and carrying out the resulting actions rather than collecting and processing data.

A global and detailed view

On the sales side, Qlik lets VFB monitor and analyze all kinds of indicators, such as the number of orders per day, margins by brand and by product, promotion tracking, average basket size, the gap between ordered and invoiced revenue, and the gap between actual Magento revenue and the revenue reported by Google Analytics.

The view the solution provides doesn’t stop there. The team can also refine its customer knowledge, in particular with the following information: male/female split, identification of “VIP” customers, number and typical profiles of loyal customers… (segmented by Qlik according to predefined criteria)

In addition, Qlik lets the managers of brands such as Lou, Bestform or Variance see not only which products are ordered most online, but also which of those are most often returned by customers. Analyzing the “return reasons” lets teams adjust sizes and descriptions on product pages.

Finally, the digital department can monitor and compare various performance indicators every day: traffic for each site, bounce rate, time spent on each page, logistics lead times…

Results

Thanks to Qlik, VFB Group has significantly improved its performance at every level. The group finally has a clear, precise view of its customers’ behaviors, desires and satisfaction levels. Today, the group’s teams observe, analyze and steer all of the site’s activities at a glance. This speed of execution gives VFB Group a real competitive advantage. Above all, it also helps the group anticipate future e-commerce challenges!