MicroStrategy Implementation
Background
In this case study we describe how a leading specialty retailer achieved a greater insight into Key performance and Sales metrics through Systech’s MicroStrategy implementation. The MicroStrategy implementation supported business users to analyze sales and inventory to identify key trends and opportunities.
To accommodate their expanding business the client sought a platform to support complex data analysis that is user friendly. Formerly they depended on time consuming and less efficient POS System.
After evaluating several Business Intelligence vendors, they chose Systech Solutions Inc. to meet their needs for identifying the key trends and making informed decisions. Systech Solutions, Inc. was assigned to design an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) for them in this regard.
Challenges
The client required a detailed access into a variety of business data to allow the business community to analyze their data in greater depth. To offer a simplified and integrated solution for a profitable growth Systech had to address certain challenges.
- To track trends and identify opportunities. Since the data was spread across disparate systems it was a laborious process.
- To manage overwhelming amounts of data from various sources—and turning it into reliable business intelligence that enabled better business outcomes.
- To effectively design EDW for consolidated reporting both from in-house applications, JDA and PeopleSoft.
- To configure and implement a scalable tool to query the EDW and to create reports.
- To build a system that would distribute reports with in a 24 hour window every month.
- To provide a platform that could keep up with constantly evolving user requirements.
Solution
Systech Solutions fashioned a business intelligence environment that comprised of a Netezza data warehousing infrastructure, a DataStage ETL environment and a MicroStrategy reporting environment.
The Systech team successfully achieved the extraction, transformation and loading of the source data into a data mart schema through an ETL process. The team made sure that the information was accurate, consistent, and optimally organized for complex analysis. The EDW was effectively designed for consolidated reporting from in-house applications, JDA and PeopleSoft. Since the source data was stored in individual schemas, the transformation strategy included consolidation of information which was common to all source systems. A user-friendly OLAP data model was successfully created to store pre-aggregated data for fast ad-hoc query performance.
MicroStrategy reporting tool was configured to query the EDW and to create reports. The Systech team developed dashboards that included scorecards to allow any type of key performance indicators (KPIs) to be rolled up into a score for a particular application area, overall IT performance, or anywhere in-between. More than 32 to 40 reports were run apart from the templates during the course of the project.
The sales data (KPI’s) was analyzed to:
- Anticipate the sales margin
- Analyze the SKU to aggregate (or roll-up) metrics into single overall “score” for IT and the inventory data
- Visualize store and warehouse inventory
- Calculate profitability evaluation ratio that analyzes the firm’s ability to turn inventory into cash above the cost of the inventory
- Study purchase orders and transfers
Result
The MicroStrategy implementation by Systech team provided the client a greater insight into Key performance and Sales metrics.
Systech developed an easy to use BI application to support their data from the users. The data warehouse was architected to support production reporting.
Multiple areas of their business used the data to manage inventory, identify sales opportunity, recognize key performers and review products.
Systech made it possible to provide customizable user experience and provide executive summary reports, analyze sales promotion and study products sales.
Systech created a robust architecture and a flexible platform. This architecture combined right level of access with required functionality and resulted in a positive user experience.
