Case Studies

A large business, operating in the UK and Europe, recycling and remanufacturing ink and cartridges for branded office supplies retailers and supermarkets.  The business has grown quite rapidly and organically, and many departments have developed their own systems over the years.  It has been necessary to design and develop new database structures, and to migrate and modify data, and reclassify information for reporting purposes.  A key requirement is flexible and automated reporting, to replace the current system which revolves largely around manual data queries and spreadsheets.

The Business Intelligence is being delivered by Pentaho,  a leading open source BI solution, which I have implemented.  Open source was used because the client was keen to explore this option, as several of the key business systems have been developed in open source software.

The system requires data cubes to be configured, allowing users to interrogate data in a highly flexible manner, and on demand.  A data warehouse has been built, specifically to support the reporting process.

This is a retail consultancy, providing reports to developers and retailers to help with decisions such as which retailers to target for properties in a particular mall, or which towns a certain outlet should look at if they are opening new premises.

The company holds a large amount of demographic and survey data, as well as information gathered by interviews at shopping centres and so on.  This data resided in a total of thirteen Microsoft Access databases, and there were a number of highly experienced users who have become accustomed to working within Access, writing their own queries and creating tables containing subsets of data and so on.  Through a process of dropping data into spreadsheets and manipulating it to produce charts and tables, a report is generated which, with input from the consultants, is the company’s ‘product’.

It was clear that the data needed to be secured to prevent accidental damage, and also it was obvious that a significant amount of the analysts’ time was spent on data assembly – extracting, copying, pasting, filtering and sorting data before the actual analysis process could begin.

I have worked in collaboration with another MS Access developer, and we have created a completely new application, with the data now stored in SQL Server.  Almost all of the data assembly process is automated, along with a fair amount of the report generation.  The completed system will save a significant amount of time and money for the business.

This is a charity, providing services to the disabled.  There are many different sources of data in the business, from an EPOS system operating in a retail environment, through to transport booking systems and accounting and CRM data.

There is a significant requirement for reporting, specifically to funding bodies, which ranges from information required by regulation or statute, through to operational reporting and so on.  At present it is very difficult to arrive at some of these reports, owing to the disparate nature of the data storage.  There is also a significant amount of duplication and double-handling.

This is a new project, but will involve a range of process and data modifications to facilitate the reporting.  For example, the first task is an automated process to transfer new customers from the EPOS system to the CRM – a task that is currently done manually by typing the data in to the CRM.

I have been subcontracted by a web developer to provide data integration services between a client’s back-office systems and the website being developed.  This will involve extracting data, and transforming some of it prior to loading it into the web site database.

This is a business that designs and builds exhibition stands for trade fairs etc.  A couple of years ago, they began to fulfil orders for one of their clients, as they had some storage space available.  This side of the business has developed, and as this key client has grown additional space has been procured, and this year is forecast to turn over about £4 million for the manufacturer.  My client is paid a percentage of this for order picking and despatch, as well as all the inventory handling – all goods are delivered direct to his warehouse, mostly from overseas.

This entire process is being run manually, with orders being faxed, emailed and telephoned over from the manufacturer.  This means that there is huge scope for improvement, and I have been working with my client on sourcing a Warehouse Management System that would provide him with the functionality that he requires and, at the same time, be able to interface with the manufacturer’s Sage 200 system.  This will be an ‘off-the-shelf’ solution, which I will install, configure and implement.