Empower Visibility and Decision Making with Data Analytics as a Service
Hissho Sushi implemented General Informatics’ Data Analytics as a Service solution to unify and streamline data sourcing capabilities to provide timely, validated and trusted data that offers critical insights into its sales, operations and supply chain.
With this centralized data repository, Hissho Sushi can quickly run reports and access accurate, business-enabling insights in minutes.
Project Highlights
- A centralized, cloud-based database consolidates data from multiple sources
- Powered by Microsoft technologies, integrated across tools the team already leverages
- Near real-time data provides insights into key business metrics
- Fact-based reporting promotes impactful business decisions
Inconsistent data hinders visibility into sales metrics
Hissho Sushi operates 1,800 franchise locations in stores, universities, airports, and government buildings across the country. Gaining insight into its sales data across all of these locations is paramount to helping the organization optimize its operations and make effective business decisions. However, Hissho relied on individual retailers to provide them with these details, and as a result, they struggled to get accurate data due to the inconsistency of how sales were calculated and reported.
Hissho spent significant time calculating information to make it consistent before entering it into a spreadsheet. This manual process was riddled with inefficiencies and the potential for human error and pulled Hissho employees away from more strategic initiatives.
To gain a more comprehensive picture of its business operations and sales, Hissho needed a more effective way to collect and analyze this multi-sourced data to make more data-driven decisions. To achieve this, Hissho sought the expertise of their existing IT provider, General Informatics.
Unified data repository aligns information for reliable reporting
General Informatics recommended its Data Analytics as a Service solution, which provides a centralized, cloud-based data warehouse that automatically consolidates data from multiple sources to offer on-demand access to information—anywhere, anytime and from any connected device.
General Informatics worked closely with Hissho to understand the company’s business systems and the information it needed to access. Equipped with these critical details, GI devised the Data Analytics as a Service solution, meshing Hissho’s previously siloed SAP system with near-real-time sales data from seven of its largest retailer partners into a single, highly scalable database.
With all business data in a single location, Hissho heightened its visibility into its sales data and operations; with access to a series of custom reports to detail Hissho’s critical metrics. This information is available from a customized, self-service dashboard that provides Hissho’s non-technical staff with critical data analytics and insights.
The scalability of the web-based architecture also allows Hissho to retain historical data without impacting performance. This provides more data points to allow Hissho to analyze data over the long term and identify emerging business or sales trends.
“Hissho wanted to move away from the inefficiencies and inaccuracies of manually inputting data into a spreadsheet,” said Chris Fogarty, Chief Information Officer, Hissho Sushi. “The automation and business logic built into our solution provides a direct stream of information that eliminates human error, improves accuracy, and delivers data in near real-time to provide Hissho with a more holistic view of its sales across multiple locations.”
Chief Information Officer, Hissho Sushi
Centralized data enables trusted insights and data-backed decisions
With Data Analytics as a Service, Hissho has achieved a more holistic and accurate view of its business. The automated processes built into the system allow Hissho to streamline the collection of data, filtering sales data directly from its franchises into the database daily. The organization can now track and analyze its sales data in near real-time to gauge the success of promotions, including its popular “Sushi Wednesday” events. With Data Analytics, Hissho can access retailers’ daily sales and be more proactive in its marketing efforts and sales decisions.
General Informatics’ Data Analytics as a Service solution also eliminates the manual efforts of compiling this information and greatly improves the accuracy of the data by automatically aggregating and aligning it to eliminate human errors. By integrating SAP into the solution, General Informatics can layer multiple data sources to assess business metrics across a wider network of information, filtering based on several parameters including store numbers, franchise operators, regions, and more.
Data Analytics as a Service also provides Hissho with insight into its supply chain, allowing the organization to assess what kind of sushi is selling best to optimize its ordering process. This is particularly essential given the limited shelf life of sushi. Understanding what is being sold, and how quickly, enables Hissho to more effectively forecast needs and offer promotions to manage its inventory.
This insight also allows Hissho to effectively monitor its sale of supplies to its franchises. To ensure the freshness and integrity of its products, Hissho requires franchises to purchase specific product supplies directly from them. Data Analytics as a Service allows Hissho to compare the quantity of individual products a franchise is selling with what supplies they are purchasing from Hissho to ensure that the quantities are in line with expectations. This visibility allows Hissho to quickly identify franchises that may be purchasing supplies from another source. Armed with this information, Hissho can be more proactive in ensuring the quality of its products and protect a critical revenue stream.
The potential of Hissho’s Data Analytics as a Service is largely untapped as Hissho continues to provide more data points for analysis. Ultimately, General Informatics’ solution provided Hissho with heightened confidence in the metrics it uses to make proactive business decisions.
