Edcon: Business Intelligence

The Edcon Group needed to make dynamic business decisions using customer information from all its companies, The Edcon Intelligent Information Innovation project was born to replace the retailer’s data warehouse with a business intelligence solution. The project brought together the expertise of its IT department, Accenture—its information technology outsourcing partner since 1998, and Microsoft, which provided the architectural input and expertise.

The Edcon Group is Southern Africa’s dominant speciality fashion retailer selling a broad range of clothing, footwear, textiles and accessories through approximately 600 outlets.

The group is comprised of Edgars and the United Retail Group. Edgars owns the Edgars and ABC brands which are aimed at middle and upper income families. United Retail Group owns the Jet, Sales House, Cuthberts and Smileys which are aimed at middle and lower income families.

In 2002, as part of its expansion strategy beyond fashion, Edcon bought SuperMart which includes seven general merchandise stores, and CNA (South Africa’s national stationery, book and periodical chain of 148 stores.)

The company listed on the JSE Securities Exchange in 1946. At the end of its 2003 financial year Edcon’s sales topped US$1.018-billion.

The Edcon Group needed to make dynamic business decisions using customer information from all its companies, but the decision-making process was hampered by a complex and inaccessible data warehouse. It lacked the flexibility management needed. Access was limited to a few experienced users so the only way most managers could get vital information was through printed reports. And there were long lead times in generating these.

The data warehouse’s design was “silo” based—meaning there was no integrated vision across the Group’s activities, customers, products or processes. The warehouse was expensive to maintain and, because information was not shared across departments, data was often duplicated and therefore data integrity was not always reliable. In addition, on-line and batch processing was deemed too slow.

The Edcon Intelligent Information Innovation project was born to replace its data warehouse with a business intelligence solution. It brought together the expertise of its IT department, Accenture—its information technology outsourcing partner since 1998, and Microsoft, which provided the architectural input and expertise.

The collaborative project team’s first step was to analyze problems and identify options for the best solution. The team decided to use Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (including Analysis Services) and ProClarity’s reporting and analysis tool to develop an architecture that would enable the existing data warehouse’s design to be the basis of a new solution.

The rapid development and implementation of the solution depended on smart and collaborative team work between the Group, Accenture and Microsoft, which managed all the technical risk, built the solution and ensured the performance met client requirements.

Starting in August 2002 the team used traditional data warehouse development methodologies, along with Microsoft Solutions Framework and Business Integration Methodology to design and develop the solution. The five-phase approach included envisioning, planning and building, solution testing, stablising and implementation.

In a record eight months the team built, tested and delivered the southern hemisphere’s largest business intelligence solution on Microsoft technology. Comparative projects usually take 18 months.

Client buy in was secured each step of the way to minimize risk in the final delivery of the solution to end users. The iterative approach of user testing each phase garnered enthusiasm from Edcon’s Chief Executive Officer and executive management, and has heightened user expectations and excitement.

The benefits of Edcon’s Intelligent Information Innovation project were felt very quickly. Information is readily available to a wide range of users who can now easily identify the root cause of business problems. There is a higher level of integration as well as improved data integrity

Performance has significantly been improved. The time taken for batch processing has been reduced by 50 percent and the Group also expects to reduce the cost of systems support 30 percent. Improvements are also expected in inventory management and customer service levels.

Overall, the collaborative solution developed by Edcon, Accenture and Microsoft thoroughly supports the Group’s strategy of aligning business intelligence design with business processes to ensure operational efficiency.