A Smarter Way to Integrate Data for Analysis

IBM Champion Jim Gallo, has been deeply involved with delivering business intelligence and data warehousing strategies and solutions for over 16 years.  He looks at how a large clothing retailer tackled its pressing business need for quick access to critical information.  Enter Jim:

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Leading Global Retailer Increases Speed to Value

A leading retailer of upscale men’s, women’s and kids’ casual clothes and accessories, operates some 1,125 stores in the US, Canada, and the UK, and also sells via its catalog and online.  When they made the commitment to invest in a business intelligence and data warehousing solution, they chose IBM’s InfoSphere DataStage and QualityStage, the IBM Netezza data warehouse appliance and Information Control Corporation’s (ICC) (http://www.iccohio.com) Information Factory model (http://www.informationfactory.com) to transform their retail data into the business information needed to help drive their growth and profitability.

Large-scale demands needed to be solved

With multiple brands that and stores located across the globe, the retailer employs multiple ERP, retail management and home grown applications to run their business.  The business needed the ability to analyze and report on multiple measures such as sales, costs, forecasts, inventory and performance across multiple dimensions such as brand, channel, store and supplier.  Just as importantly, the business needed the information to be available relatively quickly as it was being driven by the implementation of a new retail management solution.  Because of the need for a robust data integration tool and a marked improvement in delivery times, they turned to IBM and ICC.

IBM Infosphere was picked to integrate data with a high performance framework

By using IBM’s InfoSphere suite of tools, coupled with IBM’s Netezza data warehouse appliance, the retailer was able to integrate data with a high performance parallel framework, extended metadata management, and enterprise connectivity.  DataStage supported the collection, integration and transformation of large volumes of data, with data structures ranging from simple to highly complex.  It offered them a scalable platform for them to solve large-scale business problems through high-performance processing of massive data volumes.  It also enabled developers to maximize speed, flexibility and effectiveness in building, deploying, updating and managing the data integration infrastructure.

QualityStage was used to unlock the value of the retailer’s technology investment by ensuring that decisions would be based upon trusted information.  Use of QualityStage helped ensure that the information used to run the enterprise was based on business rules and that the data reflected the facts.  QualityStage facilitated the creation of a single set of standardized, cleansed, matching and survivorship rules for the company’s core business entities.

IBM Netezza was chosen for it’s fast analysis of large amounts of data

IBM’s Netezza appliance provided a database-server-storage configuration in a purpose-built system designed to perform complex queries against large volumes of stored data.   The retailer  chose Netezza because of its design for blisteringly fast analysis against terabytes of data 10-100 times faster than traditional solutions, with a lower TCO and greater ease of use. Netezza uses massively parallel processing and an architecture that put processing right inside storage to provide a brute force solution that can deal with complex analytics against large data volumes.

ICC brought together the different solutions in one effective package

ICC’s Information Factory delivery model helped drive down costs and create the advantage needed to delivery high value, high quality information in a rapid manner.  Information Factory encompasses:

• A leadership philosophy that encourages team-work, self-organization and accountability;
• A set of engineering best practices that allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software;
• A Scrum project management process that encourages short development cycles (sprints), clear deliverables and rapid adaptation;
• A business approach that aligns development with customer needs and company goals

Around 300 ETL jobs were delivered within six months and across three sprint cycles.  Sprint activities included mappings, design specifications, development, code reviews, and QA testing.  The second sprint cycle saw a 20% productivity improvement over the first and the client was able to enjoy an addition 7% improvement during the third sprint.  Having bid a fixed price for each sprint cycle, ICC was able to pass the improvement gains back to the customer in the form of lower costs and improved quality.

According to the retailer’s Business Intelligence Director, “The combination of IBM’s best of breed data integration suite and lightning fast Netezza appliance, along with ICC’s world class delivery model helped drive our speed to value while keeping our costs in check.  After completing an analysis of data integration products, there was no doubt that IBM’s product suite was the right choice from both a features and benefits and cost point of view.   And when ICC replaced the incumbent consulting firm and deployed their Information Factory model, both productivity and quality skyrocketed.”

About Information Control Corporation

ICC is the one of largest privately owned IT consulting firms in the Midwest, providing professional consulting and project outsourcing for mid-market and Fortune 500 companies in a variety of industries. Services include application development, networking technologies, business intelligence, technical support and project management.