Acta Supplies Guinness a Global License of its ActaWorks and RapidMart Products
As reported by Scott Humphrey, Acta Technology, Inc., a leading provider of data warehousing solutions for ERP applications, has announced it has secured a global software license from Guinness Limited, a British company, for ActaWorks, Acta's award-winning ERP-to-data warehousing ETL tool, as well as Acta's RapidMarts, prepackaged, "out-of-the-box" data warehouse solutions. In addition, it was announced that the Guinness SAP R/3-based global data warehouse, which was built in just six months, went live last month.
"Our objective is to build a data warehouse to support business decisions by providing a single, global view of all Guinness markets," said Giles Farrow, reporting systems manager at Guinness.
"To build such a data warehouse, we needed to extract SAP R/3 data, convert it into information and combine it with data held by our other information sources, such as legacy databases like Oracle, market research or even information from other ERP systems used by partners throughout the world," Farrow said.
"After researching the market for a SAP R/3 data extraction tool, we came up with a short-list of four companies. We selected Acta following a proof of concept trial where ActaWorks proved to be head and shoulders above the rest," Farrow said.
"Without ActaWorks our only alternative would be to employ a number of SAP specific ABAP programmers, which would have been labor intensive and expensive. ActaWorks will do for us in a couple of hours what expert programmers of this complex language would take over a week to complete. We feel Acta has the only solution to provide the data we need in a format we can use and understand," added Farrow.
SAP-Based Data Warehouse Goes Live
Development of the first phase of the data warehouse project began in November 1998. The first three applications, representing sales reporting across all major markets, management accounting to provide a single view off a single system, and vendor performance for a clear and consistent picture of the Company's global spending, went live in May, 1999.
The data warehouse delivery schedule runs parallel to the ongoing rollout of SAP R/3 to all Guinness worldwide locations. It is anticipated that the data warehouse, being managed by Microsoft SQL Server, will grow to two terabytes in size, and it is expected that 1,000 users will be accessing it for decision support by the end of the year 2000. Currently Guinness has some 21 discreet business decision support applications on its priority list. "Using Acta's solutions I believe that we have already obtained a return on our investment in this first phase," concluded Farrow.
ActaWorks
ActaWorks extracts data from SAP R/3 and other sources, transforms and cleanses the data, and loads it into a data warehouse or data mart. Data mappings and transformations are specified using a graphical user interface without the need to write any code. Information describing the SAP R/3 and other data sources, the target data warehouse schema, and the data mappings and transformation rules are stored in an open relational metadata repository. To extract data from SAP, ActaWorks automatically generates optimized ABAP, SAP's 4GL, obviating the need to develop and maintain customized 4GL code (ABAP) to manage the data warehouse process.
RapidMarts
Acta's RapidMarts for use with SAP R/3 provide an "out-of-the-box" warehouse solution that includes a target schema and source-to-target mappings and transformations that handle change data capture, hierarchy extraction, error recovery and other complex data warehouse processes. Each Acta RapidMart has pre-defined data extraction jobs that automatically populate the data warehouse with a company's SAP R/3 data and can be implemented in days. Close integration with third-party BI/OLAP tools means very rapid deployment of business analysis for customers who run their business with SAP R/3 and other ERP applications.
About Acta Technology
Founded in October 1996, and headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., Acta Technology is the data warehouse industry's first vendor focused exclusively on providing enterprise data warehouse solutions for packaged client/server applications. Initially focused on SAP AG and PeopleSoft, Acta's solutions, which have been purchased by over 60 companies in eight countries, include pre-packaged data marts, called RapidMarts, built around the industry's only extraction, transformation and loading tool, ActaWorks, architected from inception to be very tightly integrated with ERP systems. Acta is an independent software vendor (ISV) participating in the SAP Complementary Software Program (CSP) and PeopleSoft's Global Alliance Program.
Privately held, Acta is funded by Greylock Limited Partnerships, Norwest Venture Partners and US Venture Partners. Acta customers include Chevron, Church & Dwight, the Arm & Hammer Company; FX Meiller, Guinness, Maxtor, Monsanto, Sanofi Winthrop, S-B Power Tools, a division of Bosch GmbH; and Shell Chemical Company. For more information, visit Acta's World Wide Web site at http://www.acta.com.