Business Intelligence Success Story
RentCash
Founded in 2001, Edmonton-based Rentcash Inc. has created a successful
nationwide chain under The Cash Store, Instaloans and Insta-rent banners.
Rentcash operates 330 stores in over 90 cities in nine provinces and two territories,
and was Canada’s sixth-fastest growing company in 2004. The stores offer payday
cash advances and rents brand-name furniture, appliances and electronics.
Rentcash needed to update its tracking and reporting capabilities; collecting sales
data from each of its stores was a challenge that hampered its head office’s ability
to make decisions. To improve visibility and ensure a smoother flow of information,
Rentcash enlisted the aid of Microsoft® partners ProClarity and Ideaca, to build an
agile and easy-to-use business intelligence solution that has boosted staff
efficiency.
Challenge
As the company expanded, it quickly outgrew its aging sales reporting and tracking
system. Rentcash used a custom-built, legacy COBOL system to track its daily
store activity, which required constant manual intervention.
The information Rentcash generated was not properly secured and the company
found it difficult to re-use or analyze the data it collected. As well, in order for
regional and divisional executives to view reports, another Rentcash staff member
needed to cut and paste data from the information generated by the tracking system
into more intuitive documents.
Rentcash realized it had to upgrade and standardize its reporting software to
accommodate and better track their rapid growth and make sales information
available to those who needed it most. After looking at several options, including a
major ERP software package, Rentcash enlisted the aid of Microsoft® partners
Ideaca and ProClarity to upgrade its reporting system and build its solution on the
Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000.
Solution
Rentcash needed a reporting and tracking
platform that could accommodate its rapid
growth and help ensure that the company
remained agile. After looking at several
competitive products, Rentcash selected
ProClarity Analytics. “We looked at a package
from SAP but it was too cost-prohibitive for us.”
says Michael Smith, VP of Technology,
Rentcash Inc. “ProClarity seemed to offer us
everything we wanted. Looking back, that
decision was clearly the right one.”
Enlisting the aid of Ideaca, a Calgary-based Microsoft Gold Certified® partner and
integrator, Rentcash worked with ProClarity to implement the first phase of the solution in six weeks and recently completed the second phase, which completely
eliminated the need for manual intervention in the reporting process.
“It was a smooth process. We were impressed with the robustness of ProClarity
and how it helped the business users. We worked with Rentcash to help everyone
understand how we would integrate data and how we would cut down on manual
processes,” says Richard Hines, Consulting Manager, data group, Ideaca.
Some of the benefits that Rentcash has experienced are:
- Better insight into data
- More efficient use of staff resources
- Improved simplicity