INSTANT ANALYSIS OF 49 MILLION ROWS OF DATA
QUENCHES LEADING UK BREWERY'S THIRST FOR SMART DATA
Informix Corporation, a technology leader in enterprise database-powered solutions, has announced that it has just completed the development of a state-of-the-art data warehouse using Informix Dynamic Server with one of the UK's leading breweries, Whitbread Beer Company. The system, which goes live this month, holds 49 million rows of data, giving over 400 remote-based users access to weekly and monthly sales for all their directly supplied customers. This business was won against competition from all major database vendors, including Oracle and Microsoft.
Informix Dynamic Server will allow Whitbread to store up-to-date product, customer and sales information that can be accessed by the sales force remotely via an intranet. This empowers them to make rapid decisions through easy access of up-to-date sales and financial information anywhere in the UK, including onsite at customer's offices. For example, using this information, Whitbread is able to look at beer sales during the Soccer World Cup to confirm that more beer was consumed at home. This then enables Whitbread to tailor marketing and production activities around similar events to maximize beer sales.
"Informix was the database vendor that could offer a proven, technically superior, reliable system that could scale to hold the large amounts of information we required," stated Andy Palmer, business process development and IT director, Whitbread Beer Company. "We also wanted a culturally suitable company with whom we could form a long-term partnership. Informix provided everything we wanted to assist Whitbread to respond more rapidly to our customer and consumer demands in the marketplace."
This is the first Informix data warehouse in the UK to be linked to a Cognos Web server. Whitbread installed this new system in order to provide more flexible access to management information, to allow more timely and accurate product and sales targeting, and to implement a more modern and expandable platform as part of the company's Year 2000 program.
"We are pleased to be partnering with such a prestigious company to deliver a customer relationship management (CRM) solution of this nature," said Bob Walters, vice president, business development of Informix's Data Warehousing division. "Whitbread identified critical business requirements to enable them to better target their customers, and Informix was in a unique position to provide them the products and services to deliver competitive advantage. In addition, this project demonstrates Informix's commitment to our strategic partners, such as Cognos."
The system is running on IBM RS6000. Information is downloaded to Cognos cubes, then put on an intranet server for remote access. Looking ahead, Whitbread sees this as an excellent platform for future growth in holding data for such diverse areas as finance and manufacturing.
About Whitbread Beer Company
The Whitbread Beer Company brews, distributes and markets a wide portfolio of ales, stouts and lagers. Around 3,900 people are employed across 20 major sites in the U.K. including two regional distribution centers, 12 satellite depots, the head office in Luton, and three breweries in Manchester, Magor and Samlesbury. The company offers 5,000 product lines to some 40,000 customers including some of the country's best known brands, Stella Artois, Heineken and Boddingtons. Whitbread Beer Company has a 16% share of the total Great Britain beer market by volume (Whitbread estimates, 1998).
About Informix
Informix Corporation, based in Menlo Park, California, provides innovative database products that assist the world's major corporations to attain competitive advantage. Informix is widely recognized as the technology leader for corporate computing environments ranging from small workgroups to very large parallel processing applications. Informix's database server, application development tools, superior customer service, and strong partnerships enable the company to be at the forefront of major information technology solution areas including data warehousing, high performance OLTP, and Web/e-commerce. For more information, contact the sales office nearest you or visit our Web site at http://www.informix.com.