Case studies at the Center
Continuing series...
Subject:
Connecting isolated enterprise databases together
Learn how our team of expert DBA's do it every day
July 31st, 2002
By Robert Beaudoin, DBA
GCIS Inc.
Formula Z Performance Products Ltd. had some serious database problems. Formula Z Performance Products (FZPP) had many records of important customer information in two disparate databases. Additionally, there was no simple, secure way to consolidate either of them without a lot of IT people being involved. Further compounding the problem, access to its sales team was rather limited. Sales people typically had to wait for weekly sales printouts to be delivered:- not exactly "Internet time" for the Toronto-based company that manufactures and distributes hot-rod and performance products to over 60 countries. To insure that it's specialty products are professionally installed on customer's vehicles, Formula Z Performance Products also has a network of custom installation and service shops in most of it's markets.
The need for more streamlined access to customer and sales data was imperative and became the number one priority at FZPP. Formula Z Performance Products has eight manufacturing operations that produce approximately 3,450 different performance related products. Some are for the car industry (both new and previously owned), the truck market, the recreational boat industry and finally, the snowmobile market. Add to the mix 21 brands, and customers that include three-level distributorships.
The challenging requirements
FZPP maintained two separate and incompatible data pools.
Data for certain brands was held in a custom ERP system, while the rest was
located in an in-house custom-built database. A data management challenge to be
sure, but one that needed to be carefully undertaken if FZPP was to maximize
its global sales efforts.
Here is where the expertise of GCIS in datamart design & business intelligence software solutions designed specifically for the Internet and our analytic applications for manufacturing, wholesale distribution and retail enterprises come in. After researching various solutions from 14 different IT vendors, FZPP chose Datamart Builder™ from the General Center for Internet Services Inc. (GCIS) in January of 2002.
To begin with, using Datamart Builder™, GCIS consolidated both databases on an IBM AS/400. The first users were trained by June of 2002 and FZPP can now concentrate on it's core business of expanding its products and dealerships. "Manually converting and consolidating our data to do any kind of analysis used to take forever," says James T. Bradmore, director of Information Systems at FZPP. "The time savings alone is phenomenal. But more important, our salespeople are no longer making decisions based on guesswork."
Currently all sales data across all its brands, customers and regions is fed into Datamart Builder™ where it is consistent and accessible as a single data source. "Our biggest hurdle during deployment was merging data from two databases, settling on standards like product classifications, customer classifications and codes for sales regions," said Patrick Wilson, senior programmer & analyst at GCIS's datamart & integration department in Toronto. "That preliminary work was the biggest issue, but from there, everything went smoothly."
The final solution
Datamart Builder™ is a single
database solution that gives FZPP salespeople more timely
information, but perhaps more importantly, lets them manage customer information
in ways it never could before. For example, knowing which products are best
sellers in a specific region means a sales rep can better promote those
products to those regions. FZPP's data is updated in real-time, which means global
sales teams can access reports and customer histories at any time and know it's
valid, trusted information. The professional DBA team at GCIS came in and we
spent four days planning the structure of the datamart," recalls Bradmore. "They
came up with 8 different dimensions which was incredible because we never had
anything like that before."
A Sun Microsystems 5500 server at FZPP provides fast dial-in access for remote internal users, while external rep groups rapidly access the system over the Web via a secure SSL connection. In addition to its sales users, FZPP's finance, marketing and customer service teams are beginning to tap the new system. It will help the marketing group manage and track promotions, such as those that take place during the industry's major shows than can run at almost anytime of the year.
The finance group is also beginning to use Datamart Builder™ to calculate gross margins and determine which products and customers are most profitable for the company. This will help guide new product development on one hand, and the eventual phase out of unprofitable products on the other. The newly designed IT system by GCIS gives FZPP improved data management and business intelligence to target its customers and plan for growth in a far more timely, cost-effective way than it did previously. The software is available in modules such as Sales, Purchasing, Marketing, Manufacturing and so on.
"Our customers typically start with one or two modules and grow from there," says Wilson at the Center. "A lot of customers want to do as much themselves as they can, so we develop a project plan and audit the data and help with education. A standard project is 30 to 50 consulting days over 90 calendar days. Our aim is to make it easy for users to manipulate the information to get what they need without having to go to the IT department for it."
The General Center for Internet Services can carefully design and build flexible and powerful database platforms and tools that will answer your most exacting and critical corporate needs in any industry. Upon contact, your GCIS DBA representative will be more than happy to visit you and propose the best database & datamart solutions for your company or organization.
Article by Robert Beaudoin, DBA
The General Center for Internet Services Inc. (GCIS)
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