Data Warehouse | Distribution Industry

Beer Distributor Partners with RSA Corp to Build Data Warehouse

Founded in 1910, this company is a major distributor for Anheuser-Busch. It is responsible for 17 Texas counties with populations of more than one million people. It has warehouse and office facilities in Galveston, Beaumont and Victoria, Texas. These facilities receive Anheuser-Busch beers from the brewery and store them in controlled environment warehouses until they are delivered to retailers across the territory.

Challenge

The daily demands of a distribution company require immediate access to information in order to:

• Ensure vehicles are ready to roll

• Guarantee fuel is purchased at the best price

• Certify inventory is available to fulfill orders

• Ensure drivers arrive at the customers on-time with the complete order

• Indentify target customer profiles for new markets

For this company, information was available from many different sources, systems and data stores. However, data integrity was often questionable, and the level of effort to prepare specific company reports was significant. Also, its historical data only reflected a two-year period, which was insufficient for many business units.

Solution

RSA Corp worked hand-in-hand with the company’s management to help them understand how a data warehouse would improve business decision-making. By integrating relevant information, the data warehouse would provide consistent and accurate information, which could be used to improve employee productivity. We subsequently helped define data warehouse scope, database schema, integration processes and other business intelligence components.

As part of the operational deployment, we trained end-users and onsite support, as well as developed standard processes and company reports. Our consultants and the data warehouse, exceeded the company’s expectations. We continue to provide services to implement additional functions and components of the data warehouse.

Result

Before the data warehouse, this company’s business managers requested data and assistance to make effective business decisions, sometimes requesting the same information multiple times. By successfully implementing the data warehouse, business managers now have direct access to detailed information on a daily basis. The data warehouse maintains four years of historical data, providing improved trending reports and data analysis. These efficiencies have led to increased margins and improved customer service levels.