The customer is a large sales, trading and retail company dealing with consumers, business customers and business partners. Its strategic alignment is clearly directed towards innovation and services. With more than 4,000 employees and a product range made up of a variety of products and services and offers of different third-party suppliers, the customer places special demands on an efficient data warehouse and analysis & reporting solution, which supports a precise, strategic company management, from the outset.

Initial situation

The customer that was recently spun off from the group at the start of the company required its own data warehouse for the central recording of all relevant sales, employee and product data, and an efficient analysis & reporting solution that constituted an effective controlling instrument for the strategic company management by way of evaluating daily figures.

The challenge

• Extremely short window
  www Bitmanager AG was given just 6 months to carry out the entire development and implementation of the new data warehouse and reporting solution.
• Creating a basis under difficult conditions
  The situation required setting up a uniform company-wide information basis and setting up a significant and decision-supporting management reporting system including interactive drill-down and real-time reports. A target that is difficult to achieve by way of classic solutions – alone in respect of filling the warehouse.

Implementation – from the ACTUAL to the TARGET situation

• Implementation on the due date
  Following the start of the project in October 2004, the solution developed by www Bitmanager AG is put into active operation in the 1st quarter of 2005.
• Successfully creating a basis
  A crucial factor in the on-time implementation of the new data warehouse and reporting solution for the customer is the use and combination of highly developed technology:
  • Server and SAND Searchable Archive
    The decision in favour of SAND is based on the real-time business warehouse character of this modern technology. The SAND implementation by www Bitmanager AG allows for the filling without special data warehouse data preparation. Therefore the operative system and the data sources of the partners can be entered in the data warehouse via interfaces to SAP, SAPHIR and manual interfaces to csv files and flat-file data or access via ODBC. In this respect the complete data structures were transferred, and are highly productive – by consciously waiving aggregation – due to the architecture.
  • Macromedia flex / flash for management cockpit
    BO XI is the efficient reporting tool that provides some 600 users (branch managers, regional managers, internal sales, finances, personnel department and marketing, thereof approx. 60 power users) and the management cockpit with comprehensive reporting opportunities via an intuitive operable application surface. Approx. 70 standard reports from drill-down to real-time profit and loss account and additional ad-hoc evaluations and reports as well as additional, time-related, reports per SMS provide the management at the flick of a switch with key bases on which to make decisions in respect of marketing measures and the strategic company management.

The result

Within the space of just 6 months, www Bitmanager AG was able to create an ideal basis for the successful independence of the customer in active operations by way of the sophisticated combination of state-of-the-art technology and the use of their innovative power.