Costcutter build their sales cube 30 times faster using Microsoft SQL Server R2, Analysis & Reporting Services, Excel 2010 and Simpson Associates Information Services Ltd.

Costcutter

Challenge

• Costcutter are a retail organisation and the reporting application uses millions of rows of sales data.
• The legacy analysis cube was now taking 18 hours to build making daily reporting impossible.
• Daily sales reporting was a necessity for the business to understand how it was performing.
• The user community needed to be self sufficient and already used IBM Cognos reporting.
• An alternative needed to be found that could be swiftly adopted by the business users.

Solution

• Simpson Associates recommended the use of Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services to build the high volume cube.
• Microsoft SQL Server was already in use as a database engine, making its’ use for reporting extremely cost effective.
• The existing IBM Cognos front end was retained, thereby maintaining user familiarity.
• Users had the option to use Excel as a native front end, eliminating training costs.

Benefits

• Sales Analysis application now takes only 35 minutes to build.
• The application is more stable; the process is more reliable and less prone to fail.
• Microsoft SQL Server effectively provided free business intelligence.
• Existing users required no additional training.
• New users were able to use their Excel skills.
• An existing asset, SQL Server, was used to provide additional Return on Investment.