Medical lump of-megapixel (Microsoft Business Intelligence)

Situation

Today in the Medkom-megapixel company in the territory of the Russian Federation and the CIS countries (Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus) 20 branches and about 80 regional divisions in which over 3000 employees work work. All regional representative offices are united in 10 divisions which are directed by area directors. Acceptance of key management decisions is concentrated at head office of the Company which is in Moscow and totals more than 200 employees.

The company management selected the strategy of partial decentralization of IT infrastructure: The IT services and resources vital for work of regional divisions are located "on places" and are controlled by forces of IT specialists of branches. Centralized operation by IT service from head office allows to achieve uniform standards in the field of the equipment, a program environment and business processes.

IT infrastructure Medkom-megapixel is constructed on operating systems of Microsoft company. As a core of IT infrastructure of head office serves Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard R2 while information systems of regional divisions of the company are constructed on Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium. Corporate mail infrastructure is constructed on the solution Microsoft Exchange 2007 Standard at head office, and Microsoft Exchange 2003 Standard – in regional divisions. The problem of consolidation of regional networks in the corporate Intranet is solved using the product Microsoft ISA Server 2004 Standard. In each branch of the Company Microsoft SQL Server DBMS 2000 Standard are used. At head office information bases work under control of the Microsoft SQL Server of 2005 Standard and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard.

In addition to products of Microsoft, in the company products of Kaspersky Lab and Symantec Backup Exec are used. The solution of accounting and financial tasks in Medkom-megapixel is assigned to "1C: Enterprise".

The major problem of the distributed IT infrastructure of Medkom-megapixel - ensuring access of staff of the company to the consolidated information. In regional divisions BI solutions on MS SQL Server platform 2000 Analysis Services applied to creation of a local OLAP cubes were for this purpose used. As at this time databases 1C were stored in file base DBF, data exchange between financial system 1C and the BI solution was performed through the MDB format. Business processes of data-refresh in the BI solution were not regulated. The applied technologies did not allow to consolidate data in the BI solution of an enterprise scale. As a result information arriving from regional divisions came down in the manual mode that caused critical delays in data processing, arriving from places, and did not allow to make effective management decisions quickly. Besides, the large number of manual transactions significantly reduced reliability of the solution and increased the cost of its service.

Solution

The data processing system which is available at the central office of Medkom-MP company did not provide their consolidation on the scale of all company, essentially new instruments of information analysis and decision support were required. Such tools had to provide the staff of the company with flexible opportunities of information analysis, increase its reliability and reduce terms of preparation of the reporting.

Staff of IT service "Medkom-MP" paid attention to several BI solutions, including the offered Oracles and IBM Cognos, however the final choice fell on the tools offered Microsoft. The first that in them attracted - it is good price relation and opportunities. Besides, in the market it was much simpler to find the specialists capable to service BI solutions and the companies capable to perform development and implementations of such solutions. Besides also the fact that as the client software usual Microsoft Excel is used became important.

As by own efforts it was difficult to implement so many large-scale solution, the Medkom-MP company needed the partner having the wide experience of implementing solutions of Microsoft and which on the other hand is accurately understanding specifics of retail. And such partner was found – the BILab company from St.-Petersburg proposing own ready-made solution for management of retail retail chain stores – BILab Retail Analytics created on the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform became him.

"We are familiar for a long time with BILab company and always relied on its experience and professionalism. Specialists from BILab times helped us with the solution of difficult and extraordinary tasks. The solution proposed by them became a peculiar milestone in the history of development of BI technologies in our Company; it was rather flexible, scalable and not costly accompanied. Users valued convenience and ease of use of OLAP in daily work according to the merits". - Roman Bazylev, Chief of the department of IT and ACS of Medkom-megapixel

Implementation

Process of implementation of a new system of the business analysis began with creation of the data warehouse based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008. For this purpose it was necessary to carry out consecutive migration from the version of the Microsoft SQL Server applied earlier 2000 on the Microsoft SQL Server of Standard Edition 2005 and only then on the new version of Microsoft SQL Server 2008. The new server software allowed to pass also to new instruments of monitoring. If earlier for daily monitoring the Microsoft SQL Server tools were used, then now became possible to pass to Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 technologies.

In addition to implementation of the data warehouse, specialists of BILab company delivered the add-on module of automation of logistic transactions necessary for calculation of optimal formation of the commodity order indulging from the central distribution center in regional.

"Within the project, the functionality of BILab Retail Analytics was significantly expanded. The module of optimization of logistic transactions which allowed to automate calculation of a point of purchase and the size of a batch that led to significant optimization of trade inventories" - Anton Lavrov, BILab became one of expansion

The organization of collection of information and synchronization of some data for processing became the most difficult task which had to be solved at implementation of a new system. During implementation it was necessary to consolidate data almost from 100 sources, and information from 20 databases came down by means of the data warehouse on the SQL server, and from the others – means of 1C.

Directory synchronization was one more labor-consuming task. Before implementation of a new system in Medkom-MP company there was no centralized control system of the normative reference information, in all branches reference books were kept separately. Specialists of IT service "Medkom-MP" and BILab had to consolidate reference books from all databases in uniform structure. But work paid off – the additional benefit was as a result got – became possible to build the reporting under uniform structure.

The final stage of implementation consisted in integration of a new system of the business analysis into the software "1C: Enterprise 7.7", as was made without problems. Then, it was necessary to provide training of employees. In spite of the fact that as the client software Microsoft Excel was used, it was required to show employees of an opportunity and advantage of a new system and to teach to work effectively with it.

"Having consolidated the reporting under key indicators of work of the organization in the tool, convenient and simple for users, we achieved unloading of technicians, saving of time of analysts and the management, an opportunity to quickly control work of the organization. This solution goes in step with the modern concept of providing information "on one click". Besides, the solution is completely compatible to tools, usual for users" - Vadim Tsuvarev, the Head of Department of an ACS of Medkom-megapixel

Result

Thanks to joint by efforts of IT service of Medkom-MP company and specialists of BILab, 80 users of the central office "Medkom-MP" could obtain the consolidated information on all regional divisions in the shortest possible time and with a high performance and reliability. It became possible to keep the business analysis on a set of indicators. Reliability of the implemented solution is much higher, than at the system existing earlier. Growth of reliability managed to be reached due to automation of critical business processes of receiving and consolidation of the commercial information. Now the staff of Medkom-megapixel and BILab considers that they in general managed to solve assigned tasks. Earlier creation of consolidated statement on all branches took not less than three days and was carried out manually using exclusively Microsoft Excel. Now this transaction is performed almost instantly and automatically. Thus, the speed of acceptance business reshiny increased, and costs for preparation of required data considerably decreased.

"Having combined efforts of staff of IT service of the Company and BILab, we received not the just technological solution. We received the managed, reliable and documentary service, so necessary for business. At the same time all changes in infrastructure remained absolutely transparent for business users who still use usual Excel as the client software." - Vitaly Benevolsky, the Head of Department of IT of Medkom-megapixel

Prospects

Both in Medkom-megapixel, and in BILab think over further improvement of the implemented system already now. Completion of the available functionality of a system and automation of its service is supposed. Besides, at a stage of consideration and assessment there are projects on transition from the complete solutions Small Business Server to specialized server solutions based on Microsoft Windows Server.