“Through their expertise and innovative ideas in the Business Intelligence space, Ranzal helped us to design, develop and deploy a data mart and reporting solution that not only meets our current needs, but also is fully scalable and adaptable for future growth and requirements. Ranzal as a company, and our Ranzal development team, had the depth and breadth of knowledge to work closely with our internal IT team, and that made for a successful and enjoyable project experience.”
- Marcie Cootware, Director IT Development Wild Oats Markets, Inc.
Company Background
Wild Oats Markets, Inc. is a nationwide chain of natural and organic foods markets in the U.S. and Canada. The Company operates 110 natural foods stores in 24 states and British Columbia, Canada. The Company's markets include Wild Oats Marketplace, Henry's Farmers Market, Sun Harvest and Capers Community Markets. In Q1 2007, Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats Markets announced a merger.
Project Goals & Objective
The Flash Reporting Project at Wild Oats was designed to provide corporate analysts and store management access to sales data in order to make timely decisions and to facilitate managing individual stores. For the first time, Wild Oats will have this capability available to them on a weekly and as needed basis.Business Issues
The finance department had significant problem with the following:
- Data reconciliation across different applications, including GL tie-out
- Timely availability of data from various sources
- Data analysis across stores due to lack of standardized reports
- Inconsistent data being reported due to differing sources and reporting of data
- Hyperion Essbase
- Hyperion Analyzer and Reports
- Data Warehouse/Marts
Ranzal Role
Ranzal role was to design and implement an overall solution utilizing a data mart and Hyperion Essbase applications to develop a standardized Flash report for weekly sales reporting at a corporate and individual store level. The design included sales, payroll and GL marts, utilizing these to create and populate one Hyperion Essbase database containing weekly P&L information for management reporting purposes. The design was focused both on providing for current specifications as well as with expansion and future needs in mind. The data was cleansed and organized within the marts then fed into the Hyperion Essbase application to enhance data integrity and minimize effort on data reconciliation and presentation. Automated processes were defined and implemented for maintenance of metadata and incorporation of data from new sources, as well as providing for logging processes and error trapping and handling during processing. One standardized financial report was defined and developed in order to have a standard for reporting between corporate and across stores.
Business Benefits:
- Significant improvement in data availability and integrity
- Simplified the gathering and reporting of sales and other financial and statistical information
- Eliminated manual errors and reduced maintenance effort by automating the cube maintenance process
- Data analysis and decision making simplified with the standardized financial report
