Shaw Group Case Study

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 centres '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 that the existing system. Up to that point reports were generated on dot matrix printers and up 2000 pages were generated each month. Frequently only the totals of these reports were needed 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 was in two parts. The first was to get all data from all branches amalgamated 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 10 million records each year. This made the choice of database an easy one and by installing Oracle there was no worries 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 amount of 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 department, sub department, buyer, bar code, size, style, & colour. 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 only view their branch’s figures
• Key reports would be emailed automatically to certain users
• Department comparison by branch
• No 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 favourites and this meant as soon as they logged in the information they required on a daily basis was 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 the 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.”

For more information on Interactive Reporting, please contact us or visit:
www.interactivereporting.com

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