Learn how The Warehouse Group uses Elasticsearch as an engine to combat retail fraud

Trevor Jones

Lead Developer, Store Systems

The Warehouse Group

How does a customer return the same tent 15 times?

How do you stop them?

Find out how The Warehouse Group used Elasticsearch as a Speed layer to solve this problem.

In 2018 with revenues just over NZ$1.7 billion. The IT team at The Warehouse Group in New Zealand had a challenge. They wanted to develop a better way to validate that returns were genuine - it felt like their liberal returns policy was being abused, however they had no way to tell. All the data was available, but trapped inside an Enterprise Data Warehouse.  Legacy and traditional approaches to solving this problem simply wouldn't cut it so the team turned to Elasticsearch.

With Elasticsearch, the TWG team members will be able to find an electronic copy of the original receipt within seconds, and that copy will contain all the information from the original transaction, including any warranty details.

"Validated Return" has helped TWG complete a return at the correct price as well as prevent multiple returns.

Find out how the team delivered outstanding results in a matter of months. The impact has rippled throughout the organisation from the boardroom to the checkout operator.