Chanel’s Global Executive Reporting Centre makes information immediately accessible to top executives wherever they are in the world but with complete security. The global sales dashboard is a key component as it shows the latest sales information at global, regional and divisional levels. The quality of presentation of the information reflects the very high aesthetic standard that Chanel applies to all its activities.
Background
Chanel is one of the world’s premier luxury goods companies. Its brand epitomises quality, beauty and luxury. It is also a dynamic performance-oriented business. Chanel managers maintain a consistent and clear focus on performance. The sales dashboard ensures that the latest sales information is available to all top managers at all times.
Objectives
The finance team had a shared vision. The sales dashboard had to meet the very highest standards for ease of use, presentation, accuracy, accessibility and security. The application had to show the global perspective on performance and allow senior executives to drill down across and through the information to division, country and product line with ease. Use of the application should require only minimal training. It had to be fast, busy senior managers would be interrogating the information to get an accurate and complete understanding of performance and performance trends.
Solution
Thorogood experts developed a global sales dashboard for Chanel. We helped the finance team to crystallize their vision by showing them options and explaining technical possibilities. Karen Rhinehardt, Executive Director at Chanel said
We had a concept but didn’t know how to make it real, the Thorogood team enabled us to turn the vision into something tangible.
The joint finance, Thorogood and IT team was supplemented with one of Chanel’s designers who advised on presentation and aesthetics. The technical choices were made so that the requirements for both report content and a high presentational standard could be achieved. Performance and security were critical so extensive testing was carried out to ensure instant availability from locations across the globe, and to ensure the application was completely secure. Thorogood was able to help Chanel become familiar with technology which was relatively new to them; Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Microsoft SQL Server. Training was required only to help users understand the breadth and depth of the information available.
Thorogood
The Thorogood development team consisted of both New York and Bangalore based members working closely with Chanel managers to understand and meet their demanding requirements. They kept the project’s business sponsors up to date with the progress that was being made. All members of the team have been delighted with the dashboard which is being used by top executives wherever they are in the world to work collaboratively, from the same information, with complete security.
