Joshua Doore Commissions NDS for DW Solution

Joshua Doore together with the other retail businesses within the JD Group, has commissioned National Data Systems (NDS), a member of the JSE-listed Fintech group of companies, to plan, implement, maintain and support a complete data warehousing solution for the large JSE-listed retail organization.

The first phase of the project will focus on sales and inventory data with additional phases scheduled for expanding promotions and customer information.

Utilizing NCR Teradata, a leading decision-support database in the high-end marketplace, as well as a host of other products from parent company, NCR, NDS will assist JD Group in maintaining its role as one of the South Africa's leading retail groups whose retailers include Joshua Doore, Bradlows, Russells, Score, Price 'n Pride as well as Giddy's Electric Express.

"Initially we were extremely cautious about implementing a data warehousing solution, especially when worldwide statistics have showed that only 7% of data warehousing projects are achieved on time and within budget constraints," admits John Andrews, IT Executive at JD Group.

"However, we recognised the value of the data locked in our operational systems, and concluded that the only way to perpetuate our goal of maintaining a strategic advantage, was to utilize and maximize that data. As a result, we embarked on the data warehousing project, which was completed earlier than anticipated, in fact, in a record time of just over four months, and we are extremely happy to be part of the worldwide 7% of successful installations," says Andrews.

"Our operational system is distributed with a POS solution operating in each of our branches. It was decided that the data warehouse would be architectected to receive detail level transaction data on a daily basis and enable complex ad-hoc query capabilities from a group level through each business unit, down to an individual branch. The installation has provided us with a group wide enterprise repository of detailed information which was not previously available, and at the same time provided us with more detailed and timely data analysis which support the organizations strategic objectives," continues Andrews.

"Detailed ad-hoc queries which would take weeks of effort or which were impractical, can now be done in minutes and end users can now program and run their own queries, easing the load on the IT staff. The transformation exercise has also allowed a very thorough understanding of the data quality in the operational systems, identifying issues which can now be addressed and has also given us the opportunity to have a more proactive, analytical management style and approach," says Andrews.

A number of products were used to ensure that all of the JD Group's data warehousing specifications could be met, including NCR Teradata, Teradata Utilities, REELlibrarian, NCR 4400 WorldMark server, which included two 500Mhz XEON processors, NCR disc arrays with 364Gb disc storage as well as NCR DLT7000 Tape Library. The Micro Strategy Front-end tool DSS Agent, DSS Server, DSS Architect and NCR Retail Business Libraries Application were also used to complete the installation.

Julian Eales, JD Group Executive Project Manager at NDS, explains how the data warehouse process will now operate.

"The point-of-sale (POS) data in the JD Group is collected from a distributed network of SCO Unix servers situated in all of the groups 700+ branches located throughout Southern Africa. The data required for the warehouse is extracted from the operational systems in the branches on a daily basis and is transmitted to a staging area on a SCO Unix system located at JD Group head office in Braamfontein, Johannesburg."

"The Teradata load utilities then take the data from the staging system and transform and load it into the data warehouse. The data warehouse is installed on an NDS supplied high performance SMP system with 364Gb of storage in external disc arrays. The NCR Teradata RDBMS is used to enable complex ad-hoc queries directly against the database. The data is accessed by the Microstrategy ROLAP front-end tool DSS Agent working in a three-tier mode with DSS Server being the middle tier on a high performance NT server. Client access is available through the JD Group LAN." "We were faced with many challenges throughout the commissioning of the project," says Eales.

"Due to the amount of business done on credit by JD Group, the data collected was more complex than many typical retailers. This lead to the identification and verification of some complex metrics required for the business analysis identified by the Business Discovery process. In the pilot testing phase we had to pull together the resources from five group companies within JD Group, two outsource companies supporting JD Group, NDS and additional third party suppliers and contractors. And in the implementation phase, we had to ensure that timely and accurate data was received from over 700 branches on a daily basis and at the same time ensuring that it accurately reflected the data in the operational systems," says Eales.

"NDS were chosen as the preferred supplier for a number of reasons," says Andrews.

"NDS' experience in the retail space leveraging off its distributor agreement with NCR, specifically with their huge successes in the UK and the USA, proved very attractive to us. We traditionally outsource everything that is not part of our core business, and as we do not have a large IT division, we wanted the data warehouse installation to be largely self sufficient, an aspect clearly offered by the Teradata product. NDS' offering of best practices in terms of retail solutions and their enterprise approach to Customer Relationship Management, (CRM) played a large role in the decision to go this route."

"From our company view point, we concentrated on running this project as a business initiative, it was never perceived as an IT project. Our success was also due to the commitment and involvement that we received from senior management within JD Group, we firmly believe this played an integral role in the project's success," concludes Andrews.