Getting Organized
Manufacturer’s salespeople plug into a unified data source In a bid to enhance customer service, Cutler-Hammer, a Pittsburgh-based manufacturer of electrical control products and power distribution equipment, invested in a data repository that would be used by its sales force. But the tool gave the company an added benefit: a unified view of its clients.
Mainframe Booted Cutler-Hammer chose a data mart to replace its mainframe last year. It picked DecisionStream, designed by Ottawa’s Cognos Inc., instead of constructing a larger data warehouse. A data warehouse includes every bit of information from all departments within a firm, resulting in a great deal of raw data. A data mart sorts and categorizes this information, making the data it provides more practical and usable.
No Waiting “When building a data warehouse, it takes years to implement and you have business users waiting,” says Janet Amos, vice president of sales and marketing at Pittsburgh consultancy John Daniel Associates. Daniel oversaw DecisionStream’s implementation at Cutler-Hammer.
“The data mart [lets you] see results quickly,” she adds.
This system has done more than simply supply the manufacturer’s salespeople with the latest details about customers’ order status and service needs. Because the mart’s information is accessible on the Internet, managers can create reports at their workstations that previously would have been generated through a far more time-consuming process.
Multidimensional Analysis “With [the mainframe’s data] on paper, if managers wanted to do analysis they had to review multiple reports. This way, they can edit the data on-screen multidimensionally,” notes Gus Delerme, Cutler-Hammer’s manager of business intelligence.
New Avenues The mart has opened up other areas for the company. In April 1999 Cutler-Hammer issued a product share report based on data from the National Electrical Manufacturing Association. This allowed the firm to compare anticipated demand – based on projected consumption patterns – with its sales in specific regions, reallocate sales targeting efforts and explore different outlets for its products.
Access to the data mart initially was given to 125 of Cutler-Hammer’s 1,200 salespeople. While the manufacturer did not say exactly how much of an impact the system had on that portion of the staff, it eventually made the data mart available to all of its other salespeople.
