Customer Solution Case Study
/ / French Distributor Enhances Decision Making with Business Intelligence Tools
Overview
Country or Region:France
Industry:Distribution
Customer Profile
SFD is a distribution network that incorporates 270 shops under the Espace SFR brand name. The company, which employs 2,200 people, also sells telecommunications and insurance services.
Business Situation
SFD wanted to deploy a data warehouse and business intelligence (BI) solution to integrate data from applications across the company and support better decision-making.
Solution
SFD created a new data warehouse based on the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 database and its data analysis and reporting tools.
Benefits
Fast integration of business data from all operational areas
Value-added reporting supports effective management decisions
The most cost-effective BI tools available
Faster data input processes
Fast, effective deployment / “Our users will now conduct in-depth analysis and reporting aimed at enhancing management control, monitoring stock effectively, and analysing margins.”
Sylvain Coquio, IT Director, SFD
Leading French retail distributor and business-to-business telecommunications solutions provider SFD historically used Business Objects software to report on business performance. While this technology effectively analysed commercial data, it could not integrate information from operational areas such as human resources, IT, and financial accounting. To solve the problem, the company decided to deploy a consolidated, fully-integrated data warehousing, data analysis, and reporting system based on Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005. The resulting solution, which was the most cost-efficient available, integrates data from several applications, supporting enhanced management decision making and business intelligence across all operational areas. In addition, it helps users to increase management control, analyse profits and margins, and monitor stock more effectively.
Situation
SFD is a distribution network that incorporates 270 Espace SFR shops throughoutFrance. The company, which is 49 per cent owned by SFR, the Vodafone distributor in France, also sells telecommunications equipment to companies and delivers data solutions for electronic payment under the SFD Enterprises brand name.
To ensure effective management of the company, SFD historically worked with a reporting solution based on Oracle and Business Objects. However, this solution could not support the company’s requirements for business intelligence. Sylvain Coquio, IT Director, SFD, says: “The existing solution could not consolidate all business intelligence (BI) from our varied applications into a single data warehouse. As a result, we were limited to reporting on commercial data and we could not provide the heads of human resources, IT, or finance, with the reports they needed to optimise management decision making across the company.”
To solve the problem, Sylvain Coquio and the SFD IT team began planning a new, consolidated data warehousing and BI solution in late 2004. The idea of broadening reporting functionality across the organisation was popular internally and the project was quickly granted funding by the SFD management team.
Solution
After three months researching a range of available technologies, SFD decided to deploy the Microsoft® SQL ServerTM 2005 database and BI tools in March 2005. Coquio says: “SQL Server 2005 provides a single, centralised repository for all our management data. In addition, the technology comes with an Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) engine called Analysis Services, which conducts multidimensional analyses. It also provides Reporting Services for compiling reports and SQL Server Integration Services, which extracts, converts, and cleans data from existing applications before integrating it with the data warehouse.”
In addition, SQL Server 2005 offers significant benefits over previous iterations of the technology. Coquio says: “The new version is formidable, not only in terms of user friendliness, but also in the quality and complexity of reporting bundles that you can design. Data input procedures are also much faster and easier with the new technology.”
In April 2005, SFD began a new project called ‘Picasso’ with support from Microsoft Certified Partner and business intelligence consultant Oresys. The aim of this initiative was to extract and report on data from 30 business applications and to streamline management of the company’s business-to-business operations. Because each application uses its own naming convention, the project required data to be converted, cleaned, and imported into the new data warehouse for analysis.
Coquio says: “This complex procedure was required to ensure the quality and coherence of our management data. To achieve success, we depended heavily on the Integration Services feature of SQL Server 2005, which helped us to complete the project quickly and cost effectively.”
Initially, the new data warehouse will perform exclusively internal reporting functions. It will later be extended to the SFD Web site to help customers make more informed buying choices. It will also be used to provide sales information to suppliers using the corporate extranet. Coquio says: “As well as providing new services that differentiate us from the competition, the integration of SQL Server 2005 with our online content management tools will also simplify the installation of highly-secure solutions.”
Benefits
Cost-Effective Solution for Business Intelligence
During the evaluation of available BI solutions, SFD found SQL Server 2005 to be the most cost effective. Coquio says: “The overall solution is much more economical than any competing technology. In fact, what we spent on Microsoft licences represents the cost of just one component of a competing analysis tool.”
Better, More Accurate Reporting Across the Business
SQL Server 2005 provides an extensive library of graphics and a new ranking function that supports more comprehensive reporting. This function ensures that scores can be attributed to results in reports so they can be classed according to criteria such as increasing and decreasing rank. Coquio says: “Using tools that come as standard with SQL Server 2005, we can enhance our view of business data significantly.”
Project Picasso Supports Value-Added Analysis and Reporting
The intranet release of Project Picasso will be completed in early 2006. In anticipation of its release, the IT department has received a significant number of report requests from managers and departments across the company. The solution will generate around 60 different reports using 10 OLAP cubes built using Analysis Services.
Coquio says: “Our users will now conduct in-depth analysis and reporting aimed at enhancing management control, monitoring stock effectively, and analysing margins. The result will be enhanced BI across all our operational areas.”
More Efficient ReportBuilding
Currently, SFD users extract and analyse data from the OLAP cubes using Microsoft Office Excel® 2003 spreadsheet software. Soon the company may deploy an additional solution to generate dashboards.
Coquio says: “The tools that were previously available to us used PDF technology, but reports had to be regenerated after every processing step conducted by users. By using Excel, we’ve already increased interactivity and the results of each data-processing step are posted immediately.”
Fast, Effective Deployment and Integration
The implementation of the new technology was fast and problem free. In addition, the ease of integration with existing SFD systems was a significant benefit for the IT team. Coquio says: “The ease of implementation supported by the integration of these essential tools within our BI system was a persuasive reason for rolling out SQL Server 2005.”
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