AGT guides Synalia jewelry network through the maze of business intelligence

Synalia, France's leading jewelry store network, has entrusted a new mission to AGT, its business intelligence technology partner. Synalia's treasury and reporting tool is to be migrated to Saas mode, for improved pooling of financial data and, above all, direct access to information for the various member jewelry stores. This new project confirms a 10-year relationship of trust between Synalia and AGT.

Synalia, France's leading group of entrepreneurial jewelers, represents four banners: Julien Dorcel, Les Guildes des Orfèvres, Heure et Montres and Parfait Alibi. The cooperative brings together 250 members managing 450 outlets and generating annual sales of 245 million euros.

As such, Synalia acts as a purchasing and referral center for suppliers, with whom the group negotiates prices. It also provides assistance with point-of-sale merchandising and in-store assortment. Synalia also pools member communications, a sales team of field representatives, financial services and sales management. In this context, the group very quickly needed to manage, analyze and exploit a myriad of financial and commercial information from its various members.

In 2000, Synalia entered into a partnership with AGT. AGT, a specialist in decision-support analysis, has developed Info Gestion, a decision-support solution tailored to the needs of retail networks. This tool provides access to summaries and analyses of financial and commercial activity, both for the network as a whole and for each individual entity. It also offers a multi-dimensional simulation and analysis tool for making projections, enabling Synalia to steer the company as closely as possible to set objectives.

The original project carried out by AGT for Synalia involved setting up a central database of accounting documents for the various sales outlets. Synalia needed to know the financial and commercial health of its members in order to carry out its mission of advancing payments. The cooperative needed to be able to count on an overall visibility in which the various stores would be classified by sales bracket, evaluated and compared. To achieve this, AGT configured its Info Gestion solution around a set of filters defined with Synalia to launch statistical queries on consolidated information.

Thanks to the flexibility and granularity of Info Gestion's analysis, Synalia has developed the use of the database to compare stores according to an ever-increasing number of criteria, providing a more refined reading grid. Stores can now be compared by brand, by region, by sales and by month. The Info Gestion solution offers maximum processing capacity, so that Synalia can adjust and complete the analysis filters as required.

Delphine MAHON, Administrative and Financial Manager at Synalia, appreciates: "AGT has provided us with an exhaustive database that facilitates the processing of both global and individual member data. As a group of different businesses, this capability is crucial to our work. What's more, the Info Gestion solution is highly ergonomic, practical and quick to use.
In 2006, the upgradeable Info Gestion solution also enabled Synalia to integrate a module dedicated to the training of associates and their staff. Training follow-up and reporting are handled in the same way as for a network, providing the required overall visibility.

Today, AGT is working on moving Synalia's reporting and treasury tool to Saas mode. The aim is to enable each member to access the tool via a simple Internet connection, and consult their own data. This step opens up a new dimension of mutualization for the network, since until now only Synalia could consult the data in the database. These two Saas services are currently being rolled out, and will soon be operational.

Delphine MAHON concludes: "Our collaboration with AGT represents 10 years of trust. Its teams are always responsive and accessible. AGT is close to Synalia's concerns and needs as a network leader. Since the beginning of our collaboration, this understanding of our issues has proved to be an undeniable asset in helping Synalia to develop its business.