Retail giant Woolworths has signed a contract with IT group PQ Africa, through its specialist enterprise information division PQ Business Intelligence (PQBI), for a company-wide information delivery system consistent with its Web-based information delivery strategy.
Actuate`s e.Reporting Suite, supplied and supported exclusively by PQBI, will be used to access data from Woolworths` data warehouse and operational systems and report back through the company`s national intranet.
Actuate`s Web-based interactive reports will help users make better, faster and more accurate decisions with the most reliable and up-to-date information available and with minimal additional training. Customised reports for Woolworths` food, textiles, finance and retail divisions will be made available from head office to branch level.
Woolworths IT director Richard Inskip says Actuate was chosen as the tool best suited for the ambitious information delivery and distribution project.
"Our existing systems had reached their limits in terms of the volume of information we needed to report on. It was time to shift up a gear to the next level of scalable information delivery software," says Inskip.
"Because of our geographic diversity and complex business environment, a primary requirement was for the system to be able to access information in any format off multiple data sources and platforms, and to report back to technical and non-technical staff. It also had to interface with our existing reporting systems and information analysis tools, and give us the flexibility of using its interface to drill down and access information on those systems."
PQBI divisional manager Gavin Lipshitz says Woolworths understood exactly what it wanted from an information delivery tool: "So many companies approach us for a business intelligence solution when what they need is an information delivery tool.
"Actuate gives Woolworths staff immediate access to information generated and stored by the company; information they can use to make better decisions every day," says Lipshitz. "An advantage it has over other systems is its licensing structure on a per-processor rather than per-user basis," adds Lipshitz.
"This means Woolworths can expand its information delivery capacity not by the number of users, but by the number of processors it requires to manage the information volume. This makes Actuate the most cost-effective way of getting enterprise information to thousands of users in the distributed enterprise, and explains the attractiveness of the system to retail and financial corporates in particular."
Since its introduction to SA through PQBI, Actuate has been installed in over 13 sites, primarily in the retail and financial sectors, with six sites going live in the past six months.
Share
PQ Business Intelligence 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, making it 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 SA. It is also the largest Cognos enterprise software integrator and Ardent DataStage software partner in SA, 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. 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.
Editorial contacts