Sanlam`s sales department has completed its rollout of Hyperion Essbase and Wired for OLAP to 600 users branches across the country. As a consequence Sanlam has managed to switch off four legacy systems, gain Year 2000 compliancy, set itself on target for more than R1 million in annual savings, and provided speed-of-thought access to corporate information to all branch managers across the country.
Sanlam had initially bought 100 initial ports from IBD, now Global Technology Business Intelligence, and has since taken a further 50, interest in Essbase development having grown with business requirements. In addition, Sanlam has taken a site licence for Wired for OLAP.
"A year ago only regional managers had access to our information systems," says Ian Marais, IT manager: MIS for sales. "We were running on four legacy systems, which were not Year 2000-compliant."
A team of 20 rolled out Essbase and Wired in tandem to users from June last year. An important focus was on training all the users, and through the train-the-trainer approach Sanlam brought all 600 users up to speed.
The old systems were switched off at the end of 1998 and today all levels of sales management across the country must ascertain sales information and results with Essbase, which they access with Wired for OLAP from within Internet Explorer 4.0.
"Wired is very intuitive, and the new Wired 4.0 will further improve access, allowing our users to drill down to individual and transaction detail," says Marais.
System response has been excellent, with users from far north enjoying second-response times through the Web. "We have two types of report," adds Marais. "The pre-aggregated report is exceptionally fast, while ad hoc reports take a little longer."
Initial response from the branches has been positive, as users have one system through which they can access all their information.
A major element of the business plan was cost savings through reduced maintenance of the legacy applications - and Sanlam comfortably expects to achieve this in the first year.
Essbase runs under Windows NT on a four-Pentium server with 1GB of RAM and 18GB disk, with the database running on average between 10GB and 12GB. Sanlam expects the sales database to grow in size to 40-50GB as the company begins to look at enhancing its content by adding marketing data.
Marais note that the corporate champion for the project has been Gert Botha, senior manager responsible for sales management information. "A champion is essential for such a project to reach fulfilment," concludes Marais.
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