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The Shaws Group Case Study |
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Interactive Reporting in the Shaw Group
The Company
The Shaw Group of companies is an Irish business owned by the Shaw family who are now
in their fourth generation since Henry Shaw opened his first shop almost 140 years ago.
Today it comprises 14 department stores and 2 shopping centers, 'almost nationwide' employing
about 600 people.
The Problem
In 2002 it was decided to take a fresh look at the existing reporting mechanism with a view to
providing the buying and management team with report data in a better format than the existing system.
Up to that point reports were generated on dot matrix printers and up to 2000 pages were generated
each month. Frequently only the totals of these reports were necessary, but the body of the report had to
be present for reference.
In addition to these standard reports new suppliers of concession stalls were looking for transaction
data on a daily and weekly basis. These reports were needed at the lowest level and had to include data like transaction
times, receipt number, line quantities, discounts, etc.
The solution
At this point we were asked to come up with a proposal which would handle the reporting needs for the next
10 years. The solution we suggested consisted of two parts. The first was to get all the data from all branches and aggregate them into
one database. This would be done by copying all data at night via the Wide Area Network to Head Office. Having
looked at each branch it was estimated that the database would contain up to 10 million records each year.
This made the choice of database an easy one and by installing Oracle, we eliminated the problem about future demands.
The second part of the solution was to deliver a user-friendly data-mining product which would allow users to
analyse the vast data and yet deliver the resulting figures in summary form. To achieve this end, Interactive Reporting
was used. This reporting tool gave staff the power to analyse by just about anything including branch, major
departments, sub departments, buyer, bar code, size, style, and color. Installed in seconds on user's
workstations, the system operates using a standard browser.
Some of the advantages relevant to Shaws were:
Users could be restricted to view only their branch's figures
Key reports would be emailed automatically to certain users
Department comparison by branch
Eliminate the need to print huge reports each month
Reports delivered to management much faster
Supplier data extracted and sent automatically
Initially Interactive Reporting was used for sales analysis but
soon after it was expanded to other areas. One of these was Purchase Orders. With the aid of the
system, branches could see in summary form what orders were due for delivery by week, from each supplier
and for what internal department. Users could setup their own favorites which means that as soon as they logged
in the information they required on a daily basis was immediately visible without the need for specifying any criteria.
E.g. show all orders due for delivery this week.
Norman Shaw, company secretary, said that "just as some people wonder how they managed before Internet
and Email, we at Shaw Group wonder how we ever managed without Interactive Reporting.
There is no daily user intervention, everything is automatic and branches can generate their own reports
without the need for outsourcing IT support."
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