Lepistö-Group is a Finnish family company founded in 1995, and specialist discounter of homeware and hardware using a department store model that supplies the consumer direct. The company’s first Hintakaari store was opened at Kyröskoski, Western Finland in 1996. Since then they have grown the business and now boast six stores, with stores ranging from10,000 to 40,000 square feet. They are located across Finland located in Eura, Hämeenkyrö, Kouvola, Kyröskoski, Loimaa and Pori. The Hintakaari stores business alone has an annual revenue of around 10 million EUR.
Zoined was first introduced to Hintakaari at the Kotilaakso trade cruise as Lepistö-Group’s Project Manager, Sami Lepistö explains “When we first met Zoined we were impressed by the concept, however, I’ll admit we just couldn’t see how it was going to be as simple as they said it would be to get started. We had a number of data feeds to integrate and in my experience integration projects take a long time to get right. We revisited the service six months later and it was clear that other companies in a similar position to us were up and running within days with Zoined. That’s when we decided to take the free trial.”
“Zoined very quickly proved that it was possible to run an integration project in days and the ease of deployment was effortless. Zoined handled everything and ensured all the right data feeds were integrated. It was a very fast process, in fact, once we’d given approval to access our data – a simple email qualification – it took just three days to start receiving our first reports automatically”, Lepistö says.
“As a result, Zoined is now an indispensible tool in our business. It’s helped us to be more strategic and make timely and relevant decisions – there is no longer a reporting lag. This means we can be more competitive and react to customers and the market more effectively.”
Lepistö says that the company is making better decisions as a result: “It’s so easy to ask a question about business performance, and quick to get the data back to answer it, that we use it numerous times throughout the day. Earlier the reporting took a lot of time, but now we get the reports in seconds, so we save a lot of time and can make decisions that will make a difference. We can follow the daily, monthly and yearly sales trends far more effectively, and Zoined’s flexibility means we can call off specific time periods – for example when we had a promotion running – and run reports at numerous levels for example by store, supplier, product range or by individual item”, Lepistö adds.
Zoined is also used across the company, not just by the buyers. The store managers use it to make trading decisions testament to how fast and easy Zoined is to use. “Zoined can be used with any device from PCs and laptops to tablets and mobile phones, and wherever in the world you are as long as you have an internet connection. This has allowed us to open up Zoined to the wider company and give our employees meaningful information that they can easily read – no more spreadsheets, instead data visualised with charts they can quickly understand,” explains Lepistö.
“Each user can easily modify their reports with the metrics they want and need every morning, and there’s no cost for extra users. We are now a far more responsive business as a result,” concludes Lepistö.
