For a Mid-west retail super market chain that has 182 store locations, GDI built Labor Forecasting & Reporting Solution upon their Enterprise Data Warehouse to reduce the ad-hoc reporting.
The Challenge
Client Background
GDI’s client is a major retail super market chain with 182 store locations in Mid-west region. The chain has estimated sales of $13.2 Billion and is rated 10th largest private retailer of U.S. by Forbes in the year 2006. It is the pioneer in modern super center concept and is well known for its quality products and services.
Project Objective:
- Provide a complete labor analytic solution for the industrial engineers to assist in more accurate labor forecasting for the stores.
- Provided a enterprise labor reporting and analytical layer which allow the business group to better control their reporting and analytics and help remove the development team from the ad-hoc report building process
The Solution
Technology Employed:
- Teradata (EDW)
- System Architect (Enterprise modeling tool)
- Micro-Strategy (Reporting)
- SQL Server Analysis Services (Cube for end-user ad-hoc report.)
- ETL Technology IBM Datastage
Project Details:
Labor Forecasting and Reporting for all the stores was done in silos by employing different disparate packaged solutions specific to each department. Hence the enterprise labor reporting process required significant manual effort to assemble and distribute reports. Additionally the data was incomplete and lacked quality constraints to insure information integrity.
The project involved three-prong approach:
- Harmonizing different reporting hierarchies and terminologies between different solutions (user group).
- Data Profiling and Identifying relationship on the existing packaged solutions for improving the data quality of these operational systems.
- Building a Unified reporting hierarchy for Labor analytics and build an enterprise warehouse for labor reporting which supports all departments.
At tactical level, the data warehouse needed following changes / additions:
- Operation Data Store – To cater to existing tactical reports.
- Enterprise layer with Labor Subject area.
- Dimensional layer for canned reporting solution.
- Analytical layer for end user self-service/ad-hoc reporting.
Key Responsibilities:
- GDI consultants collaborated with the client teams for identification of different problem areas and to carefully determine end-point goals.
- Our consultants applied expert data analysis skills in design and development of proposed solutions to ensure that the solution met client requirements.
- To harmonize different reporting hierarchies and terminologies between different solutions (user group).
- Data Profiling and Identifying relationship on the existing packaged solutions for improving the data quality of these operational systems.
- Building a Unified reporting hierarchy for Labor analytics and build an enterprise warehouse for labor reporting which supports all departments.
- Developed Business & Conceptual data model for highlighting the disconnection between different systems.
- Identifying data quality issues with the source system and addressing them (either in source or during ETL process)
- Identifying and mapping different system in the enterprise warehouse
The Results
The enterprise wide labor forecasting and reporting solution is implemented at the client site. The initial assessment (upon immediate implementation) shows significant savings in efforts and costs by improving end user satisfaction and reducing ad-hoc reporting.