After a major Hyperion update in 2012, Pep Boys began experiencing performance issues. They toyed with the idea of migrating to competitive products like IBM Cognos, but IBM was too costly and impractical.
2. makers couldn’t seem to get an accurate
picture of their stores’ overall
performance.
Every end-user at Pep Boys was impacted
in some way by their Hyperion system’s
poor performance. Managers, area
directors, division directors, corporate IT
members, human resource professionals,
and executives, were heavily impacted.
For example, HR executives at Pep Boys
had a hard time retrieving payroll reports
from the system.
For reporting and analysis, Pep Boys stores
were using three different tools; IR (Brio),
Web Analysis, and FR. However, these tools
were missing crucial dashboard, GUI, and
end-user features for reporting. The report
creation and maintenance processes
were time-consuming; reports were not
being created on multiple Essbase cubes
like they should have been. Fetching daily
sales and analysis reports at the store
level was an extremely slow process. The
system was incapable of providing a clear
picture of the flow of transactions in
financial statements. Moreover, it was
unable to create ad-hoc reports.
Pep Boys’ data analysis process was
Excel-based, manual and tedious. There
was no central repository to extract
information across stores. A background
ETL process was in place for data filtering,
but it hindered performance. As a result,
evaluating sales numbers and planning
sales targets became another major
challenge for Pep Boys.
After investigating problems in their
system, Jade Global recommended an
Oracle BIFS (Oracle Business Intelligence
Foundation Suite) implementation. As part
of the implementation, Jade migrated
multiple Hyperion reporting systems into
one integrated platform (Oracle BI) using
pre-built utilities. Oracle BIFS is a
best-in-class platform with ad-hoc query
and analysis, interactive dashboards,
map-based analysis, enterprise reporting,
and mobile analytics. The solution’s
multiple administrative tools helped Pep
Boys make real-time decisions for any
type of customer interaction. This
transformed Pep Boys’ entire planning
process.
All data from Pep Boys retail stores was
migrated to a central repository. Manual
Excel processes were transferred to Oracle
Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS).
BICS presents data in interactive,
user-friendly dashboards that can be
easily interpreted by non-technical users.
The new system was equipped with
role-based security and provided more
transparency in user roles. With improved
insights, decision makers at Pep Boys were
able to see local store attributes such as
pricing, promotions, order management,
and vendor management. With the help of
BI features, managers at Pep Boys can
quickly and easily share periodic sales
bulletins and purchase orders from any
retail store, at any point in time. Decision
makers and store managers are now set
up to plan for the future and create more
accurate, realistic targets.
The management team at Pep Boys had a
clear vision for future growth. They wanted
a reporting tool that provided
performance visibility into store levels,
state levels, and region levels. Jade
transformed Pep Boys’ operations by
delivering a high performing IT Solution at
a lower total cost of ownership.
Business Challenges
Existing Hyperion Essbase on AIX server
not delivering expected performance
Report creation and maintenance was
time-consuming
Data extraction and analysis was
Excel-based, manual and time
consuming
Redundant Ad-hoc queries and inability
to do Ad-hoc reporting
System missing crucial end-user features
for reports and dashboards:
Missing GUI features
Missing Drill-down functions for
detailed viewing
Not mobile compatibility and
outdated look and feel of reports
Poor performing web analysis reports
impacted stores nationwide
Tedious process for HR to retrieve payroll
reports
Inability to flow transactions into
consolidated financial statements
Poor system performance while retrieving
income statements
Background ETL processes hindered
performance
Jade Global delivered a flexible solution
that aligned with Pep Boys’ business
model. At the corporate level, the solution
provided visibility for decision makers. At
the store level, there was enhanced
transparency. Overall, the new system
helped decrease response time by 50%
and increase user productivity by 60%
Performance and Productivity
Improvements
Migration into One Integrated
Business Intelligence Platform
The Solution
Jade Global implemented Oracle BIFS,
migrating multiple Hyperion reporting
systems into one integrated platform
(Oracle BI) using prebuilt migration utilities
Advanced BI features like mobile
compatibility, map-based analysis,
interactive dashboards, and
administration tools
Redesigned the system with role-based
security
Replicated all old reports into BICS
dashboards
Migrated manual excel processes into BICS
dashboards
Housed all company reports in one central
storage system on the Cloud