Business: Car washes, gas and convenience store items
Revenue: $200 million
Location: Buffalo, N.Y.
Company size: 30 locations, 27,000 employees
IT Director: Chris Boebel
Goal: "To get a good handle on what we were selling -- and to whom," Boebel says.
Selection process: Delta Sonic also considered Business Objects and MicroStrategy Inc.
Purchase: Cognos Inc. product
Justification: Self-service aspects; Cognos built proof of concept.
Price: $250,000
Peer networking: Contacted Harrah's Entertainment Inc., another Cognos customer
Typical B.I. question: Will a customer who buys the basic car wash buy Rain-X?
Surprise finding: 20 oz. bottles of Pepsi were outselling Coke in most Chicago stores.
Result: Altered ordering, stocking, display cases
Quote: "This Coke/Pepsi thing is something we ... might not have noticed if we hadn't been able to analyze product performance across a group of stores by category," Boebel says.
Busted myth: Chicago always prefers Coke.
This was first published in May 2007