Golf Plus
Golf Plus being fully focused on golf, it used DQE to remove obstacles to in-store data collection, improving both the customer and team experience.
For over 40 years, the Golf Plus Group has been the go-to retailer for all things golf, offering a full range of equipment, clothing and footwear. With shops in France and Belgium, the company offers its Golf Plus range both in-store and online, and complements it with Golf Plus Outlet locations for clearance and pre-owned gear.
DQE’s real-time assisted and qualified data entry makes it easier for in-store teams to collect customer addresses. They save time, enter reliable data, and can completely focus on their core work—sales and customer support and satisfaction—without data slowing things down.
Olivier Le Guen
Operations Director - Golf Plus
Use case
Issues
Since 1982, the Golf Plus Group has been the leading distributor of golf equipment, clothing, and footwear. Its Golf Plus retail brand offers its products in 38 points of sale in France and Belgium, as well as via its e-commerce website, golfplus.fr. The group is expanding its offer through its clearance and second-hand Golf Plus Outlet stores. Golf Plus’ concept is pioneering stores with a strong customer focus. Olivier Le Guen, Operations Director at Golf Plus, explained: ‛In our points of sale, we take pride in offering expert advice and making it easier for our customers to enjoy the game. We offer a smooth experience, focused on their sport.’
Nevertheless, collecting data has to be a priority. At Golf Plus, this first and foremost happens in the points of sale, whose registers are integrated into the group’s ERP system. The staff enter customer contact details (surname, first name, postal address, phone number and email address) when they check out. This data is vital for being able to reach customers, organising email or SMS campaigns, and sending them the annual catalogue by post.
But input errors—incorrect email addresses, postal addresses and phone numbers—were impacting deliverability in CRM campaigns and the annual catalogue mailing. Another problem was that the data from Golf Plus and Golf Plus Outlet, once combined into one database in the ERP, created duplicates. For example, there could be several records for one customer who had used different points of sale—stores or the e-commerce website. ‛Our database had more than 500,000 contacts, but we knew this number was skewed high due to duplicates. Having multiple files for the same person also makes things more complicated at our points of sale: which record should we use when several of them come up after searching for one name?’ said Olivier Le Guen.
When the group deployed its new Cashmere ERP in 2015, it decided to qualify customer contact data to avoid these problems.
Solutions
Cashmere’s compatibility naturally led to the group choosing DQE’s Data solution for postal addresses. Since an interface between the two solutions already existed, points of sale were able to implement real-time validation of data entered, followed by the same operation on the e-commerce site. ‛We use both interface methods—outside and inside the ERP—and we had no problems with either one’ , recalled Olivier Le Guen.
Later, they put the deduplication solution in place. DQE helped the Golf Plus teams with this, setting up the merge rules they needed for the retail business. ‛Working together with DQE helped us configure our duplicate merge rules so that the master record had precedence over the duplicate. Now we have completed the data merge according to the constraints we set out’ , added Olivier Le Guen.
Since autocomplete was integrated into the forms, the teams can validate the data entered in real time—names, postal addresses, and phone numbers. Additionally, a deduplication batch is run each night on the database to ensure that no duplicates remain from new entries.
Results
Elimination of almost 20% of duplicates
Golf Plus started out its deduplication process by carrying out one-time cleansing of the database. This brought down the amount of duplicates by between 15 and 20%. This operation also lessens the database’s load on servers, and keeps the database volume aligned with usage levels for systems such as the CRM.
Golf Plus now enjoys the benefits of deduplication, which eliminate approximation and confusion. The group has a clear view of its customer base, and can precisely allocate sales by customer, improve its customer knowledge, and easily consult and update customer records. All of this increases performance of the customer database, including in stores where onerous aspects related to data are removed from the local customer experience.
Deliverability optimised up to 10%, mailings made more reliable
Thanks to cleansed customer data and verified and exact contact information, contactability has been strengthened in loyalty and customer-relations activities through newsletters and SMS campaigns. This increased the SMS deliverability rate, as well as the corresponding rate for email campaigns, which saw an increase of 8 to 10%.
Furthermore, qualifying postal addresses and deduplication of records avoid a twofold problem when the annual catalogue is mailed out. On the one hand, Golf Plus sees undelivered mailings go down. On the other, the company eliminates multiple mailings to a unique household that includes several customers, thanks to clearer identification of customer contacts. From a cost standpoint, this streamlining provides noticeable savings of about 5% on postage fees.
In-store data collection is fluid, both for employees and for customers
The points of sale were able to ramp up customer data collection: ‛DQE’s input help and real-time qualification encourages the in-store teams to collect addresses. They save time, enter reliable information, and devote themselves completely to their line of work—sales, and customer service and satisfaction—without friction from data’ , confirmed Olivier Le Guen.
This allowed data quality to contribute to putting customer data at the heart of in-store operations, the group’s main collection sources. Olivier Le Guen added: ‛Data quality is central to what we do, and serves to facilitate in-store operations. This supports offering a quality experience to customers when they come to Golf Plus and Golf Plus Outlet.’
SECTOR
Retail
CHALLENGES
- Deduplicating a database skewed by duplicates
- Increasing contactability during CRM campaigns
- Removing obstacles to in-store data collection
BENEFITS
Elimination of almost 20% of duplicates
Deliverability increased by 8 to 10%, mailings made more reliable
Smooth data collection with autocomplete
