AST Enterprise Solutions Management (ESM), a Premier Partner and the preferred distributor of Brio Software in SA, has announced large deployments of the Brio Intelligence application at AVIS Europe.
As the leading car rental company in Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia, Avis Europe serves more than seven million customers each year. In a new initiative, the company has introduced a data warehouse to convert customer transaction data into valuable business intelligence with the help of Brio Software.
The car rental industry is highly competitive. Always keen to exploit new opportunities, the marketers at Avis recognised a need for enhanced and more accessible information. This would help them better understand individual customer`s buying patterns and, in turn, create a service that more accurately targets customers and their needs.
Since the late 1970s, Avis Europe has held details of reservations and rentals on the company`s mainframe computer. The data warehouse was designed to take information from the existing IMS database and migrate it, using ETI Extract, to a Sybase database environment which could then be accessed by users throughout the company. In total, 42 million records were propagated, equivalent to around three years worth of information.
As Jan Spencer, Director of IT Development at Avis Europe, recalls: "The marketing department were the main drivers for the implementation of the data warehouse. But it was clear to us that the information could be beneficial to a wider audience within the company."
Other areas of Avis destined to benefit from the new business intelligence strategy include customer service, pricing, business planning and sales administration.
In order to help users make the most of the new information available in the data warehouse, the IT development team at Avis needed to find a sophisticated reporting and analysis tool. Brio Software was one of three solutions tested and, by the end of the evaluation period, had emerged as the clear favourite.
Said Spencer: "Brio was the unanimous winner, both the IT team and end-users preferred it to the other solutions tested."
According to Dave Jones, Data Warehouse project manager at Avis: "The IT department chose Brio for its ease of implementation, low overhead and simple on-going maintenance." He also cites some advanced features present in the Brio solution, such as the ability to deliver reports via the Web.
"The users liked Brio for its look and feel - it`s a powerful yet easy to use product. Our people found it easy to follow their train of thought and find the desired information quickly. With the IT team and end-users in agreement, it was an easy decision to adopt Brio," commented Jones.
Avis uses a number of Brio products to design and deliver effective reports from the data warehouse to the users. Brio Intelligence is employed by the IT team to create the various reports and screens viewed by end-users to perform their own analysis and ad hoc query. "Brio gives us a fast and flexible way to design and distribute the kind of sophisticated reports we need to produce. What`s more, Brio Intelligence lets us tailor the reporting process to match our specific requirements," said Jones.
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In just three years the AST Group has established itself as one of the leading information and communication technology companies on the JSE Securities Exchange. Its consistent creation of value for shareholders, clients and employees has resulted in a steady increase in monthly revenue to the R100 million plus mark. AST is now the fourth largest South African IT company by market capitalisation, and is one of the top three in terms of physical infrastructure (mainframes, servers, desktops, and networks under management) and geographical footprint with over 62 physical locations.
Counting almost 90% of the top 100 JSE-listed companies among its clients, the AST Group services mostly large corporate and government clients, but is increasingly offering services to rapidly evolving small and medium enterprises.
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