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Vietnamese Cloud-based Business Intelligence (BI) is the future. And one of the first BI vendors to capitalise on this trend is Birst - "the only enterprise BI platform in the cloud." This article will provide you with a case study of how Build.com drives their business forward with Birst’s cloud BI system.
Build.com needs better analytics for faster decision making
Prior to Birst, Build.com had over 40 employees using SQL on a regular basis. However, most of them had never had any experience with SQL prior to working for Build.com. As such, it was really important that Build.com could provide a tool that would give their technical employees a quicker access to the needed information, enable them to spend less time gathering and formatting data, and more time on analysing it, making decisions and taking actions that drive the business forward.
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Build.com needed a cloud-based solution that was robust enough for advanced data modelling, yet agile enough to deploy quickly and to iterate upon regularly. They also needed something that was user-friendly so that they can provide self-service reporting.
After comparing a number of BI solutions, Build.com decided that Birst was suited to meet the organisation’s needs.
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Build.com has boosted revenue and gained greater customer insights
By using Birst’s BI platform to combine and analyse the customer-related data, Build.com has been able to extend their customer lifetime value, reduce customer acquisition costs, and focus more on profitable customers for better overall results.
More specifically, Build.com uses the Cloud BI from Birst to create a single source of the customer insight by combining customer web analytics with other important customer data from various sources.
With this insight, Build.com can increase revenue by investing more in channels and activities that bring the most profitability. Brandon Proctor, Vice CMO of Build.com, said: “The new actionable insights we gain will enable us to propel our growth at an even faster rate, while maintaining efficiency and, ultimately, profitability.”
Birst’s Cloud BI can also boost the customers’ online experiences by analysing and then predicting the propensity to buy of a customer for a specific recommendation. From there, Build.com is able to recommend products more precisely, in both type and time terms.
Therefore, they can reduce customer touch points before purchasing, and decrease their customer acquisition costs. Besides, the customer interactions likely lead to additional purchases can be better understood so that the lifecycle of Build.com’s targeted customers can be expanded.
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In addition, Birst helps Build.com to automate the reporting and analysis of organisational performance. With access to a unified source of information and intuitive online dashboards, Build.com is gaining more transparent and consistent internal insight.
Building distinct advantages with Birst
“Birst is providing us a distinct advantage across the marketplace. With Birst, we’re increasing efficiencies, decreasing costs, making better decisions, and improving employee productivity,” as stated by Brandon.
Matt Volk, Birst’s Administrator at Build.com, stated: “Birst’s provided us faster insight which has allowed us to optimise certain revenue channels and areas of our business. On the whole, Birst was able to deliver on our requirements while others were not. So, here we are, one year later, many iterations later, and we’ve got over 100 employees and Birst, and we’re seeing the value on a daily basis.”
About Build.com
As a subsidiary of Ferguson plc, Build.com is an online home improvement retailer with the headquarter in Chico, California. Their products are lighting hardware, appliances and other supplies for bathroom and kitchen.
Build.com began as an Internet start-up selling plumbing supplies in 2000. Christian Friedland and David Boctor, the enterprise’s founders, created a browse-able online retail website to sell faucets. The website’s previous name was FaucetDirect.com and eventually was renamed to Build.com. Since then, they have branched out to a lot more categories including lighting, HVAC, hardwood flooring install services and more.
Build.com has around 600 employees (figure at January 2018). Since 2007, Build.com has been named in the Internet Retailer Magazine’s annual Top 500 List of online retailers. Now, the enterprise is in top 80 Internet retailer specialising in the home improvement industry.
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About Birst
Birst is a cloud-based BI platform that provides analysing, exploring, and visualising Big Data tools for businesses. Founded in 2004, Birst is a global leader in cloud BI and analytics. In 2015, Birst was placed among the top vendors for Centralised BI Provisioning and OEM/Embedded BI in Gartner’s Critical Capabilities for BI and Analytics Platforms Report.
Birst is also a partner of many technology giants like Amazon, SAP, Microsoft, etc. Birst technology provides many services with the specialities of Self-service BI, Data warehouse Automation, Agile Business Analytics, Dashboards, Reports, In-memory Analytics, Ad Hoc Reporting, Sales Analytics, Finance, Wealth Management, Insurance and Cloud Business Intelligence.
