Petroleum giant Sasol has followed up the successful launch of its HR data warehouse with a project to improve data access for its commercial operations. The project has been managed and implemented by PQ Africa`s PQ Chem division in conjunction with the PQ Business Intelligence division.
The commercial data warehouse will store information for 13 total cost of ownership (TCO) areas - including electricity, process materials, hired labour and rental equipment, mining services and mining production equipment. PQ Chem`s knowledge warehousing competency manager Lynette Wolhuter elaborates: "Sasol employs material and management teams to optimise performance in specific commercial areas, each with its own data store.
"Each store is run as a separate process and loaded into the data warehouse for easy access. In this way the commercial data warehouse will greatly simplify material and management data access in the same way the HR data warehouse expedited access to Sasol`s organisational staff information."
Sasol retained the technology core of the HR data warehouse for the project, using Cognos`s enterprise Web tools, including PowerPlay Enterprise Server, for query and analysis functions on the warehouse. Low-volume data staging was run on Microsoft`s SQL Server (on Windows NT), with higher-volume ETL (extraction, transformation and loading) operations handled by Ascential Software`s Unix-based DataStage software. Ascential`s SapStage was used to convert data from Sasol`s SAP R/3 ERP system.
"We`re also building separate cubes for each data store, which, once loaded into the data warehouse will be linked by horizontal layers across all the commercial divisions," adds Wolhuter. "The warehouse is expected to go live in May with the first store, electricity."
As part of the project, Sasol has upgraded its software licences for Cognos`s PowerPlay Enterprise Server (from 50 to unlimited) and purchased 100 user licences for Cognos`s Web bundle.
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PQ Business Intelligence - a division of PQ Africa - is based in Cape Town and is the centre for business intelligence operations in the PQ Africa group. It has more than 75 specialist business intelligence consultants, so it is the largest focused business intelligence team in the country.
PQ Business Intelligence is the exclusive system integrator for Whitelight analytical applications and the principal system integrator for Actuate e.Reporting tools in South Africa. It is also the largest Cognos enterprise software integrator and Ardent Datastage software partner in South Africa, and has been named a Verity reseller.
The PQ Business Intelligence team offers a full range of end-to-end Enterprise Information Enablement (EIE) solutions - including planning, consulting, integration, education and development services - designed to affect bottom-line profitability in under 90 days.
PQ Africa
PQ Africa was formed as a result of the merger of Persetel Holdings and Q Data. Comparex Holdings Limited has a 50% minus one share interest in PQ Africa. The black empowerment group NITAC (the National IT Acquisition Consortium), led by Real Africa Holdings Limited, holds a controlling interest of 50% plus one share in PQ Africa.
PQ Africa is SA`s leading provider of competitive, innovative and flexible business solutions based on Information and Communications Technology ("ICT"). These comprehensive business solutions include systems integration, consulting, package implementation, software development, outsourcing, hardware, software, peripherals, voice, video and data communication systems, customer relationship management solutions and networking equipment and services. Internet solutions include the development and deployment of electronic commerce and electronic data interchange-based solutions and digital authentication.
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