U.S. Postal Service Deploys Informatica`s PowerMart Software To Improve Customer Service Nationwide
In order to gauge customer buying trends across the country, monitor the effectiveness of its advertising campaigns and improve inventory management for local post office branches, the Postal Service has chosen PowerMart data-integration software from Informatica to build an enterprise data warehouse which will centralize sales information nationwide. Targeted for full deployment by 2003, the system is designed to further one of the Postal Service's most important goals: improving customer service.
"As an organization that handles more than 41 percent of the world's mail and serves seven million retail customers each day, the Postal Service is the perfect example of a large enterprise that can really leverage its enormous amount of business data by transforming it into valuable business insight," said Gaurav Dhillon, CEO of Informatica. "After successfully completing a rigorous round of tests by the Postal Service, we're pleased Informatica's PowerMart has proven its ability to manage enormous amounts of data and has won the confidence of the Postal Service as it initiates this business-critical project."
The Postal Service will use its new retail system, Point of Service (POS) ONE, to capture more detailed information about customer purchases, such as the type of stamps chosen and the quantity of money orders requested. The Postal Service is now installing POS ONE in more than 20,000 post offices nationwide. Detailed sales information from each POS ONE terminal will be transmitted each night to a centralized, multi-terabyte data warehouse. Business, marketing and retail personnel within the Postal Service will then access this data warehouse in order to analyze the company's retail sales activities.
Additionally, the Postal Service data warehouse will allow local post office managers to analyze customer traffic patterns during the day so they can more efficiently staff their offices. The Postal Service also will be able to better monitor the effectiveness of its advertising campaigns by examining their resulting effects on sales.
"By identifying customer purchasing trends, the Postal Service can better tailor its products and services to individual post offices and provide the right product at the right price," said Steve Youngblood, Postal Service project manager.
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Informatica develops and markets enterprise software products and services that enable many of the world's largest companies to build and manage business intelligence and analytic applications across the enterprise. Informatica maintains an extensive list of industry-leading customers worldwide and supports partnerships with Cambridge Technology Partners, EDS, Ernst & Young LLP, Microsoft, PeopleSoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, SAP AG and Siemens Business Services. For more information, call 800-970-1179 or visit Informatica's Web site at http://www.informatica.com.