Travis Perkins is using Big Data software from Talend to help boost online sales and streamline its product data depositories, warehouse and e-commerce functions.

The new system enables Travis Perkins employees to easily identify and address duplicates in the inventory system, so that staff have the correct view of what is being sold and the company can accurately display its products online.

The building and home improvement retailer currently has an inventory of more than half a million items, but information on those products had been held on disparate databases and legacy enterprise resource planning systems. The company has been moving its product catalogue online, going through the entire inventory, categorising products, manually filling in missing information and standardising formats. It deployed Talend software to help comb through the records and identify gaps, making 30,000 product data updates in the first six months of implementation.

“Data quality was becoming a costly issue that was having far-reaching impact on warehouse, shipping and e-commerce functions,” explained David Todd, group data director at Travis Perkins. “Incorrect product descriptions and inventory counts were causing delays in order fulfilment, preventing us from being efficient when load planning and capacity managing our warehouses and transportation. We needed to clean the data in order provide a better customer experience.

“Talend is a key component as we move forward with de-duplicating other data types, such as our branch, supplier, employee and customer information,” he continued. “Ultimately we’d like to push the data entry as far upstream as possible, with self-service entry options for suppliers. Once we get our data quality where we want it we’ll move on to data analytics, and we’re also initiating a new business intelligence strategy in the cloud. Thanks to Talend, Travis Perkins is becoming a truly data-driven company.”

Share Story: