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Background
John Player & Sons is a leading player in the Irish €1 billion plus cigarette market with a market share of more than 30%. The company’s brand portfolio includes John Player Blue, the Superkings range, Marlboro, Fusion and Henri Wintermans cigars.
John Player & Sons also dominates
the roll-your-own sector where Golden Virginia is the No.1 brand
continually increasing its share of the market. The company also
distributes Drum roll-your-own tobacco. These two brands account for
over 65% of the total roll your own market.
Business Requirement
John Player & Sons had a requirement for a dedicated data warehouse independent of their Movex ERP system.
The key objectives of the system
where:.
- Build a Windows NT based Sales &
Marketing Data Warehouse.
- To reduce AS400 processing of Sales Statistics queries.
- To reduce the size of the Movex Sales
Statistics file.
- Develop desktop delivery of Sales
Statistics to the Sales & Marketing function.
Solution
Over a four-month period Genbase Solutions, in
co-operation with John Player & Sons, delivered a comprehensive
and robust data warehouse that feeds their sales reporting tools. A SQL Server database houses the sales data and this is regularly updated using MS SQL Server Data Transformations Services (DTS) which links to Movex using AS/400 ODBC tools.
Conclusion
The data warehouse contains 3 years (current
year + 2 previous) at any time that facilitates current sales and
historical trend reporting. Sales queries are now running in
isolation from Movex. The volume of statistical data stored in Movex
is now reduced substantially. Overall there is increased performance
of their ERP system for fundamental business functions.
System
Architecture
- MS SQL Server 7 Client Server Database
(running MS DTS Packages)
- ODBC link to Movex on an IBM AS/400
- Cognos Impromptu reporting tools on client PC’s..
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