"Before the data warehouse, the person who yelled the loudest got the best service. Now our most valuable customers get the best service," says Alicia Acebo, Continental's data warehousing director. That strategy is helping the company narrow its losses during a period of great instability in the airline industry.

To boost compliance of Korn/ Ferry's new recruitment process, Gary Hourihan, president of the strategic management assessment business, spent one day in 28 of Korn/Ferry's offices around the world selling the search partners on the value of the new Management Assessment System. Several of the senior associates in each office got certified in using the system so that they could help search partners with their executive recruitment researchor just do it for them.

Reap the Rewards
Ace, AMS, Continental and Korn/Ferry have harvested real value from their systems. Because Ace's EDW contains information on competitors' prices, regional prices and promotions, Ace has been able to optimize its pricing structures to increase profitability. Mike Altendorf, Ace's vice president of information technology, says that in 2001, sales revenue increased 90 percent across the 1,500 stores that changed their pricing structures in two product areas according to a price analysis done in the EDW. With the data warehouse, the company can now show retailers that are reluctant to increase their prices why they can do so for certain products without losing sales volume, or decrease the prices of other items and still prompt enough sales volume to more than compensate for the lowered cost.

Ace also uses its EDW to identify specific customers for target mailings. For example, a month or two before homeowners think about lawn care, Ace sends a promotion for fertilizer to individuals who've purchased Miracle-Gro or similar products from an Ace store in the past. Ace's goal is to ensure its stores are the first that come to customers' minds when the time finally comes to groom the lawn. By zeroing in on customers who've bought fertilizer in the past, Ace weeds out families that subscribe to lawn care services like ChemLawn. And because this type of campaign is better targeted, fewer promotional announcements are mailed out, which saves money on the cost of the campaign.

Altendorf says the response rates for Ace's marketing campaigns run between 6 percent and 20 percent. The average response rate for a target marketing campaign is between 2 percent and 3 percent, according to industry averages. In 2002, the average number of visits per store from customers who are members of Ace's Helpful Hardware Club increased on average by 5 percent, and total gross sales per store increased on average by 12 percent because of these campaigns.