Google Cloud Platform Case Studies American Eagle Outfitters: Leveraging IoT for Enhanced Retail Decision-Making

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	American Eagle Outfitters: Leveraging IoT for Enhanced Retail Decision-Making Google Cloud Platform

American Eagle Outfitters: Leveraging IoT for Enhanced Retail Decision-Making

Google Cloud Platform

Technology Category	Analytics & Modeling - Big Data Analytics Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning
Applicable Industries	Consumer Goods Retail
Applicable Functions	Quality Assurance Sales & Marketing
Use Cases	Experimentation Automation Retail Store Automation
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services Testing & Certification
Challenge	American Eagle Outfitters, a leading US clothing manufacturer and retailer, was facing the challenge of staying relevant to changing customer preferences. The company needed to innovate with investments in pricing, promotion, assortment, technology, and in-store experiences. However, executives needed confidence in the ROI of these activities to justify the associated spending. The company was also dealing with an increasing amount of data from various sources including web, mobile, and third-party data combined with transaction, inventory, weather, mobility, and other market data. This presented new opportunities to understand and shape customer behavior but also required a more efficient approach to data warehousing to increase speed and scalability. Read More
About Customer	American Eagle Outfitters is a US-based clothing manufacturer and retailer that offers lifestyle apparel and accessories to consumers worldwide. Over the past two decades, the company has used data as the foundation to inform and enhance every customer experience. The company’s data-driven culture, along with the fact that it has always owned product fulfillment from material sourcing through sales and service, has enabled it to remain quick and agile. The company is continuously innovating with investments in pricing, promotion, assortment, technology, and in-store experiences to stay relevant to changing customer preferences. Read More
Solution	American Eagle chose Google Cloud and partner Accenture to transform its approach to data analytics and enhance decision-making for different investments across the enterprise. The company overhauled its approach to data warehousing, taking advantage of the native integrations across Google products to fast-track insights on their data. By exporting Google Analytics 360 data into BigQuery, American Eagle was able to better understand its different customer segments on the web and customer targeting. The company also prioritized the testing platform as a key need and decided to work with Accenture to automate data science for better results at scale. The experiment solution delivered business interfaces, embedded analytics tools, and reporting features all integrated within American Eagle’s BigQuery environment. With tools including Google Kubernetes Engine and Cloud SQL underpinning the deployment and experts at Accenture working on the project, the new testing solution was up and running in four months. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Big Data Analytics

Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning

Applicable Industries

Consumer Goods

Retail

Applicable Functions

Quality Assurance

Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Experimentation Automation

Retail Store Automation

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

Testing & Certification

Challenge

American Eagle Outfitters, a leading US clothing manufacturer and retailer, was facing the challenge of staying relevant to changing customer preferences. The company needed to innovate with investments in pricing, promotion, assortment, technology, and in-store experiences. However, executives needed confidence in the ROI of these activities to justify the associated spending. The company was also dealing with an increasing amount of data from various sources including web, mobile, and third-party data combined with transaction, inventory, weather, mobility, and other market data. This presented new opportunities to understand and shape customer behavior but also required a more efficient approach to data warehousing to increase speed and scalability.

About Customer

American Eagle Outfitters is a US-based clothing manufacturer and retailer that offers lifestyle apparel and accessories to consumers worldwide. Over the past two decades, the company has used data as the foundation to inform and enhance every customer experience. The company’s data-driven culture, along with the fact that it has always owned product fulfillment from material sourcing through sales and service, has enabled it to remain quick and agile. The company is continuously innovating with investments in pricing, promotion, assortment, technology, and in-store experiences to stay relevant to changing customer preferences.

Solution

American Eagle chose Google Cloud and partner Accenture to transform its approach to data analytics and enhance decision-making for different investments across the enterprise. The company overhauled its approach to data warehousing, taking advantage of the native integrations across Google products to fast-track insights on their data. By exporting Google Analytics 360 data into BigQuery, American Eagle was able to better understand its different customer segments on the web and customer targeting. The company also prioritized the testing platform as a key need and decided to work with Accenture to automate data science for better results at scale. The experiment solution delivered business interfaces, embedded analytics tools, and reporting features all integrated within American Eagle’s BigQuery environment. With tools including Google Kubernetes Engine and Cloud SQL underpinning the deployment and experts at Accenture working on the project, the new testing solution was up and running in four months.

Impact #1	The implementation of Google Cloud and Accenture’s solutions has allowed American Eagle to leverage automated analytics to run in-store tests to optimize pricing, layout, and store location decisions, as well as to improve overall brand experiences based on more dynamic, timely customer insights. For instance, the company can quickly conduct in-store testing on promotions using control data from times before the promotion begins and real-time sales performance. This enables the retailer to understand whether a buy-one, get-one sale will be more profitable than a buy-one, get-one half-off sale, and exactly what types of customers each of them are attracting and how the program can be further fine-tuned. The experiment solution built on top of BigQuery opens the doors to testing products more efficiently before a season leading to more successful product placement in stores.

Impact #1

The implementation of Google Cloud and Accenture’s solutions has allowed American Eagle to leverage automated analytics to run in-store tests to optimize pricing, layout, and store location decisions, as well as to improve overall brand experiences based on more dynamic, timely customer insights. For instance, the company can quickly conduct in-store testing on promotions using control data from times before the promotion begins and real-time sales performance. This enables the retailer to understand whether a buy-one, get-one sale will be more profitable than a buy-one, get-one half-off sale, and exactly what types of customers each of them are attracting and how the program can be further fine-tuned. The experiment solution built on top of BigQuery opens the doors to testing products more efficiently before a season leading to more successful product placement in stores.

Benefit #1	Centralized data store for transaction, inventory, and web data that can be used for multiple solutions without compromising on performance
Benefit #2	Accelerated solution development and deployment from concept to production in four months
Benefit #3	Millions of dollars in savings through store testing and a cost-effective platform

Benefit #1

Centralized data store for transaction, inventory, and web data that can be used for multiple solutions without compromising on performance

Benefit #2

Accelerated solution development and deployment from concept to production in four months

Benefit #3

Millions of dollars in savings through store testing and a cost-effective platform

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Overview

American Eagle Outfitters: Leveraging IoT for Enhanced Retail Decision-Making

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit