business information system

BUSINESS INFORMATION
SYSTEM
January 2015
Presenters:
Azzy Golshani (Director, HBC Reporting Strategy)
Harjeet Komal (Lead BI Technical Analyst)
1 Abstract
BI Reporting from a User's Point of View at a Large Department Store
Company
Listen to Hudson's Bay talk about how they enable reporting and analysis
from a business user's point of view. They will review:
•  How they use MicroStrategy to present users with the data they need to
make effective business and operational decisions via dashboards,
reports, automated reports etc…
•  They will talk about how they perform change management with
MicroStrategy.
•  Additionally they will talk about the process used to ensure reports are
tuned and the reporting environment is kept responsive.
2 Agenda
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HBC – Who Are We?
HBC Banners
Pre-Microstrategy Era
Why Microstrategy?
HBC Reporting Environment
HBC Enterprise Data Warehouse
What is BIS?
System Availability
Available Reports
Accessing Reports
BIS Security
External Login Page
Report Naming Convention
Report Subscribing and Sharing
Report Enhancement Process
Performance Tuning Process
Performance Tuning Findings
Change Management
Demo
3 HBC – Who are we?
4 HBC – Who are we?
Incorporated in 1670 (344 Years old), the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) is the
oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the
world. A fur trading business for much of its existence. Today, Hudson's Bay
Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada and the United
States including Hudson’s Bay, Lord & Taylor, Home Outfitters, Saks and Off
5TH.
5 HBC Banners
Hudson’s Bay is a chain of 90 department stores, and the bay.com, that operate across
Canada. Stores are present in Canada's largest cities. The largest stores is Queen Street
store in Toronto with approximately 1,000,000 square feet.
Lord & Taylor, based in New York City, is the oldest upscale, specialty-retail department
store chain in the United States operating 55 stores. Concentrated in the eastern U.S. In
2008, Lord & Taylor became a division of HBC in January 2012.
6 HBC Banners
Home Outfitters is Canada's largest kitchen, bed, and bath superstore, with 69 stores across the
country selling bedding, towels, housewares, and other home accessories. The average Home
Outfitters store size is 34,000 square feet.
Saks, Inc., is an operator of 39 high-end department stores in the United States under the
nameplate Saks Fifth Avenue. It was founded in NYC in 1867 and is currently headquartered in
New York City. Saks officially became a member of the HBC family on November 4th, 2013.
Originally conceived as a clearinghouse for Saks Fifth Avenue merchandise in 1990, Saks Fifth
Avenue OFF 5TH with 64 nation wide stores has reinvented itself as a major national retailer in
its own right and, most recently, a compelling place to find the same exceptional deals online.
7 Pre-Microstrategy Era
Prior to implementing MicroStrategy, Hbc was using a different application that
was less structured.
•  Users liked the blank template approach, where they could pick and choose
what they wanted to see in their reports, allowing for greater flexibility in their
data pulls.
•  Users would run their reports and end up with different answers depending of
how they had set up their queries.
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The system was not web-based.
It did not allow for report reviewing before exporting.
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That system also used a large amount of resources to run efficiently.
8 Why
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•  One common reporting system for all HBC banners, merchants, stores
and vendors.
•  Single version of the truth.
•  Web-based and easily accessible.
•  Custom reporting is available where users can create reporting for their
specific requirements and can select from a list of metrics and attributes.
•  Provides greater visibility to their business and allows for better decision
making.
•  Home Office associates would not have to assist stores with reporting.
•  Able to export reports to Excel for manipulation, printing or emailing
•  Able to save templates as well as subscribe for easy reporting (ie onetime set-up).
9 HBC Reporting Environment
•  Currently on MicroStrategy 9.4.1
•  Running against Teradata 13.10 and Oracle 11g
•  There are approximately 4,300 users in the United States and Canada
including Merchants, Stores and Vendors
•  Presently have over 200 reports used by Merchants, Store Ops, Finance
and Marketing teams
•  Currently running a 4 tier MicroStrategy setup
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Web server
I-server
Desktop
Web access
10 HBC Enterprise Data Warehouse
•  Teradata Database approximately 14TB
•  Teradata Production running on 7 Node 6700
•  Development Environment 6 Node 2850 Appliance
•  Users run approximately 35,000 Reports per week.
•  Approximately 60% of these reports run in less than 1 minute
during our heaviest peak period of the year.
11 What is BIS?
BIS (Business Information System) is a web-based system used to generate
reporting for all of HBC.
Built using the MicroStrategy software platform , BIS is able to provide financial
KPI’s that can be shared between banners, stores and our vendor partners.
BIS is able to provide users the ability to customize reports for a variety of sales,
inventory and markdown metrics and also attributes and pricing details for all
level of organization, hierarchy and timeframes.
By adopting MicroStrategy technology across HBC, we have seen the speed by
which decisions are made and productivity levels increase.
HBC users analyze and share corporate data with ease.
12 System Availability
BIS is available from:
•  Monday to Saturday from 7am to 8pm
•  Sundays and most holidays from 12pm to 5pm
User Help Desk (BIS Solution Centre) is available from:
•  Monday to Friday from 8am to 4pm
BIS Solution Centre is dedicated to help with:
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Assistance on report generation
Data issues
Additional training and follow-up on
specific functions
Procedural questions such as “What
do I do with this report?”
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Navigation
Terminology questions
Communication (updates/changes)
Consolidation of issues related to
training
General trouble shooting
13 Available Reports
Several different reports exist within BIS, created in different ways to support the
different needs of the business:
•  Automated Reports
•  Dashboards
•  Executive Reports
•  Merchant Reports
•  Vendor Reports
•  Store Reports
•  Exception Reports
•  Financial Reports
14 Accessing Reports
All reports are accessible on HbcNet by navigating the following path:
15 BIS Security
Security can be set depending on the job role and responsibilities. We have
developed an application that allows our support team to easily update security.
16 External Login Page
BIS Users and Vendors can access the system external to the network via a
web link using their login credentials.
17 Report Naming Convention
To help identify reports and relay issues we developed a naming convention :
18 Report Subscribing & Sharing
Report Subscription:
•  Allows the user to have a report automatically run based on a given schedule and save
it into their “History list” or email it to them.
•  Users can subscribe to 30 reports
•  Currently there are over 5,300 daily and weekly subscribed reports
Report Sharing:
•  Users can share a report they have created by saving it to appropriate folders under
the shared folder. Other users can then go to the shared folder and open the report and
personalize it.
•  Users can also share a report they have created by saving and emailing the link to the
newly created report.
19 Report Enhancement Process
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Data QA, functionality and stress testing were done by the HBC BI team,
ensuring the BIS data matched our source systems.
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The MicroStrategy environment is setup with 4 distinct environments:
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BIS DEV
BIS QA
BIS UAT
BIS PROD
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Once the reports have been successfully tested in the BIS UAT
environment, they are migrated to Production in a bundle promotion
process (typically done on Thursday nights).
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Numerous checks and balances are put in the bundle promotion process,
along with regression testing to ensure a successful bundle.
20 Report Performance Tuning
Don’t lower your expectations to meet performance! Raise your level of
performance to meet your expectation – Ralph Marston
21 Change Management
22 Change Management Overview
the Change Management provides resources to enable success with the change and minimize the produc8vity dip at Go Live Produc-vity Accelerated produc-vity Go Live Minimized dip in produc-vity Time 23 Moving Up the Curve
Understanding the specific impact to different groups will allow us to proac-vely move people along the change curve. Advocacy & Ownership COMMITMENT Sustainability & Resonance Engagement & Empowerment Educa-on & Alignment Unaware • I am unaware Aware • I am aware of it Acceptance Understand • I understand it & can explain it Engagement • I support it • I believe in it • I recommended it • I am open to it • I see how it benefits me • I am involved • I accept it (but don’t necessarily want it) • I see the benefits TIME & CHANGE MANAGEMENT SUPPORT 24 Change Management - Challenges
•  Dealing with the few individuals that saw change as negative
•  Started testing too late in the game due to upstream delays
•  Started the Super User program too late in the game
•  Business areas that had poor results, had trouble trusting the data.
•  Some users required refreshers on metric definitions, report functionality for which they
had received training and reference material.
•  Attempted to make a report as the master report that does everything
•  Needed more testing on the Report performance specially the master report during
UAT sessions
25 Change Management – Learnings
•  It is imperative that the senior leadership team fully supports the initiative.
•  It’s important to bring any new members of the Sr. Merchant team up to speed as soon
as possible and get their feedback on the direction
•  It is essential for the senior team be involved in change management and for the main
business communications to come through them
•  It is very important to create a pilot group (Super Users) from all levels of the hierarchy
•  The performance team needs to be involved from the outset of report development with
reviews of performance during UAT testing and post production installation.
•  Stay positive at all times
26 Conclusion
•  Change is difficult for most people, ensure that individuals responsible for
rolling out the change are committed, extremely knowledgeable and believe
in the benefits.
•  Ensure senior leadership shows support throughout the entire process.
•  Ensure tools and continual support are available.
•  Ensure that the all decisions and processes are documented and clearly
communicated
•  Ensure that the performance of your reporting system is constantly monitored
and performance tuning efforts are a continuous ongoing effort, not just when
performance becomes an issue.
•  Sell the change before rolling it out, and constantly remind the organization of
the benefits.
27 Reporting Examples
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Automated Reports
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MicroStrategy Reports
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Dashboards
26 Automated Reports Weekly Cross Banner Sales and GM Report
The purpose of this report is to provide the executives with a view of:
•  Sales, GM and Inventory TY, Plan and LY
•  Day, WTD, PTD, STD and YTD timeframes
•  Sales and GM by bucket (Eg. Regular Sales vs Reduced Sales)
Dummy Data used for Demonstra;on Purposes 29 MicroStrategy Report
Dummy Data used for Demonstra;on Purposes 27 MicroStrategy Report
Dummy Data used for Demonstra;on Purposes 28 MicroStrategy Report
Dummy Data used for Demonstra;on Purposes 29 MicroStrategy Report Dummy Data used for Demonstra;on Purposes 33 Merchant Dashboard – Product View
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The product view provides a view of key sales, GM, inventory and markdown metrics by
hierarchy level.
Users will select a GMM and then click on “DMM”, and the DMM’s within that GMM will
display.
Once the list of DMM’s appear, users can select a DMM and then click on “Buyer” and the
Buyers with than DMM will display.
Once the list of Buyers appear, users can select a Buyer and then click on “Dept” and the
Dept’s with than Buyer will display.
All timeframes are available and can be selected as required.
34 Dummy Data used for Demonstra;on Purposes Merchant Dashboard – Product View
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When the user drills down from GMM, a view of the top 25 brand in each hierarchy level will
display. In the example below, Buyer 125 from DMM is displayed and the top 25 brand in
Buyer 125 are displayed.
35 Dummy Data used for Demonstra;on Purposes Merchant Dashboard – Product View
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The user can also view Aged Inventory Blend for the same hierarchy level that was selected
to view the top 25 brands. In the example below, Buyer 125 from DMM is displayed and the
Aged Inventory Blend for Buyer 125 is displayed.
36 Dummy Data used for Demonstra;on Purposes Questions?
Azzy Golshani -­‐ Azzy.Golshani@hbc.com Harjeet Komal – Harjeet.Komal@hbc.com HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY HUDSON’S BAY ·∙ LORD & TAYLOR ·∙ SAKS FIFTH AVENUE SAKS FIFTH AVENUE OFF 5TH ·∙ HOME OUTFITTERS 37