Microsoft Solutions for:

Executive summary

Data is fast becoming European retailers’ most valuable resource and the clamour for access from users and suppliers is reaching a crescendo. Retailers are inundated with requests from all parts of their business for information that will enable users to perform their jobs more effectively and bring a new dynamism to store management, marketing, the operation of the supply chain and development of new channels to market.

Microsoft SQL Server is a proven low-cost solution for complex business problems on the Windows NT platform. It is a scaleable, high-performance database management system designed for distributed client/server computing. The latest release of SQL Server, SQL Server 7.0, puts intelligence into the hands of desktop and remote users. Thanks to its scaleability, Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is cheaper than other database solutions, enabling retailers to move data processing, access and analysis out of the data centre to all parts of the business.

This white paper describes the urgent need for data and the distribution of information to business users through a Digital Nervous System that will support people, processes, customers and partners in the pursuit of their business goals.

For on-line product information:

http://www.microsoft.com/europe/industry/retail

Data management in retail

Setting the scene

A brief review of the recruitment sections of any computer magazine will show that database skills are in big demand which continues
to outstrip supply in all industry sectors. Retailing is just one of the industry sectors that is starting to see the real value of the data it has been gathering, and more importantly, of integrating the data to support decision making in any part of the organisation. The real value in the networked organisation is in the value of the data that it holds and in its ability to make that data available to users in head office, stores, suppliers and even customers.

Traditionally, retailers made adjustments to their business operations using historical data extracted days or even months after critical events and served to a handful of managers via paper reports. The information was accessible only to a handful of users and quickly went out of date, making it too late to be of any real benefit.

Because of the time and effort required to extract these few paper reports – usually background financial statistics of little benefit to the front line business – other areas of the business went unrecorded. Decisions made subsequently would then be based on a random agglomeration of financial statistics, gut instinct and the input of a variety of directly and peripherally involved managers and staff. Moreover, retailers could not benchmark their procedures because they were unique to each organisation, making expansion, particularly into other countries, difficult.

The problem was partially addressed during the 80s and early 90s by document image processing and workflow. Once paper-based text and images were computerised, they could be served via simple desktop programmes to any user on the corporate network. This approach encouraged companies, although mainly in the financial services sector,
to realise that dynamic data sharing was possible.

The limitation of this approach, however, was that most users were not operational staff and therefore not close to the business, a particular problem in retailing where attention to detail and quick response are
critical to success. They required training to use the packages that were often hard to use and presented data in complex spreadsheets rather than graphically. The packages were also, often, proprietary and could not work with other packages.

Moreover, the data that was being accessed was generally being taken from a single data repository and could only reveal limited information. For instance, a few managers would be equipped with Executive Information Systems (EIS) that would give them key indicators such as weekly, monthly and year to date sales across all stores. But detailed data such as sales by store, region, department and product would require further lengthy data analysis.

In short, managers never had a panoramic, up-to-date view of their business. Decisions would be made by managers in one part of the business using limited data about other parts of the business where managers there knew that the decision was wrong. Technically, workflow was possible, in practice it did not work. Moreover, a number of pockets of automation and data analysis would have grown up in different parts of the business, all unable to communicate with each other, often replicating tasks and not necessarily accessing raw data from the same source.

The data landscape today

Client/server computing has put power firmly in the hands of the user, while keeping control at the centre. The challenge has been to bring the distributed retail estate under a single computing infrastructure while enabling it to retain autonomy

Client/server computing has put power firmly in the hands of the user,
while keeping control at the centre. The challenge has been to bring the distributed retail estate under a single computing infrastructure while enabling it to retain autonomy. The integration of both the infrastructure and the data continues apace and is starting to produce results for some retailers.

A typical retailer is now able to draw raw data from its stores, warehouse and head office as well as call centres, the Internet and third party sources, and integrate it on a single data repository. It is able to consolidate the data for analysis either at the centre, or back in the stores via the Internet or corporate network. Users now range from marketing and financial analysts at head office to store managers and remote workers out in the business. Each user can be served using the most appropriate desktop tools and interfaces, whilst working from common views of the data, ensuring one version of the truth. More employees than ever have become data users, even to the extent that staff on the shop floor are served read-only spreadsheets via wireless networks to hand-held computers running an Internet browser interface.

Users from outside the enterprise, the retailer’s suppliers and business partners, are now sharing corporate data and using it to contribute to key processes such as replenishment, promotions management and new product introductions. Using inexpensive networks and interfaces afforded by the Internet, retailers and suppliers can collaborate as part of a value chain to improve customer service and cut supply chain costs.

By using industry standards for data storage and transmission, and packaged software, large volume data handling and exploitation becomes available to a greater number of retailers, particularly small and medium sized. And for all retailers, as more and more sectors consolidate throughout Europe, it is becoming more critical to quickly integrate their operations with the companies that they have acquired or are partnering with. They are then in a position to operate pan-European retail networks seamlessly.
The ultimate goal, and one that is starting to become a reality, is the creation of a Digital Nervous System that encompasses people, processes, customers and partners, and gives them access to data, tools and networks, and the processes to support them. Low cost, scaleable, high performance databases are key to the creation of this nervous system.

Retail head office database usage

Retail in-store database usage

Microsoft’s vision: The Digital Nervous System in retail

The closer that retail staff tended to be to the operational end of the business, the less likely they were to have access to information. Data has tended to be centralised and trickled only slowly to other parts of the business.

With the advent of personal computing, more and more users have access to information. While data will still tend to be served in read only form, more and more data requires input from end users, taking advantage of desktop tools such as Access and Excel, or through hand-held devices.

A Relational Database Management System such as SQL Server 7.0 is aimed at the core activities within retailing:

· Business intelligence and decision support;

· Data warehousing/data mining;

· Business management/internal communications;

· Global retailing information systems;

· Logistics/supply chain management;

· Back office;

· Electronic payment systems;

· Customer loyalty/customer service;

· Customer information systems;

· Internet/intranet applications;

· Online retailing.

Подпись: Increasingly, networked data can be made available to users regardless of platform, device or location. Using simple PC-based, hand-held devices, users can use local processing power to query local databases.
Increasingly, networked data can be made available to users regardless of platform, device or location. Using simple PC-based, hand-held devices, users can use local processing power to query local databases. For more in depth queries, they can use email to request datamarts from head office which they can then view via simple spreadsheet programs. Using replication and other networked data policies, users in any location can engage in workgrouping, adding value to data and ensuring a consistent view.

But there is often a gap between retailers’ business problems and the technology that Microsoft delivers with partners to help solve those problems. In a true networked organisation, it is not only the technical architecture that is critical. Retailers must consider both people and processes – are people trained or empowered to use data? Are there adequate processes and procedures in place to enable them to participate. Does the network enable the effective participation of suppliers and business partners?

A fully functional Digital Nervous System (DNS) encompasses the digital data and the people that make any business successful, together with the processes they have to implement to solve customer problems. The DNS ties together the core parts of a business.

The business context

The Digital Nervous System (DNS) of a business consists of :

· People: together, people make good decisions promptly and work effectively together. These people represent different responsibilities including store staff, category managers, IT staff, marketing managers and logistics operators;

· Processes: the basis of working business systems. Retailers want to achieve operational excellence with the best possible systems to run their business. This is true for the store systems but also for the warehouse and head-office applications, as part of a value chain;

· Customers and partners: the secret of success in the digital economy is forming successful relationships with customers and partners. Retailers are the key intermediary between customers and suppliers.

The degree to which these elements work together determines how effectively companies can act, react, and adapt in competitive situations. What Microsoft is providing within the framework of the Digital Nervous System is the opportunity for retailers to take business values and bring them to life in the form of practical scenarios, namely:

· Knowledge management

· Business operations

· Commerce

Components of the Digital Nervous System

Knowledge management

As organisations streamline, they increasingly move away from task-based strategies and move people into knowledge-based roles to make the most of their organisational and intellectual capabilities.

To illustrate this, there has recently been a shift, at the store level, from traditional operation of a point-of-sale to a point-of-service approach, especially in non-food retailing.

As a result, retailers are putting richer, more adaptive and more flexible applications on the PC and POS than ever before. From an information technology standpoint this requires a knowledge management infrastructure to share information and best practices inside the organisation.

Knowledge management is a critical issue and there are many challenges to meet. What Microsoft provides is an infrastructure and a set of tools that, in conjunction with partner organisations, generate solutions to help companies address some of these critical issues.

A combination of services and Microsoft technology will deliver the best knowledge management solution for the customer. The practical approach to knowledge management is to build a system based on Microsoft Windows NT, Microsoft Site Server, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL Server.

Typical examples in retailing cover the broad strategies within the organisation that will analyse, share and track data. These include collaboration, publish and search, tracking and workflow, and data analysis.

SQL Server databases will drive knowledge management infrastructures such as intranets, data analysis and search tools, access to external databases, workflow, and auditing.

Example 1: Identifying profitable customer segments

Having created data warehouses and populated them with sales data taken from EPOS systems and customer data taken from loyalty schemes, retailers are developing tools that can be used to sort and analyse the data to generate insights that can be applied immediately to benefit the business. This may include the creation of new customer segments – large numbers of special categories that contain detailed data on customers contained within. Retailers can make more accurate decisions about reaching these customer segments and boost return on marketing spending, with the result that the return on investment for data warehouses can be fast.

Retailers are now also using data mining techniques to discover trends that are not revealed through normal queries. Valuable results can only be derived where large amounts of data from a variety of sources are integrated. For instance, a retailer may discover, through an association between human resources planning and departmental sales, the exact profitability of each member of staff in each store. By digging deeper retailers will also start to discover connections that they had not specifically looked for and which cannot be extracted through normal data querying methods.

From there, results can be distributed to users. The data warehouse is a true networked server, connected both to central transactions systems from which raw data is extracted, and departmental servers and desktops, enabling users to query and analyse data dynamically or via data marts.

Example 2: Infrastructure for collaboration

Retailing probably comprises more tasks than any other business. The traditional supply chain has tended to be seen in narrow terms: the links between the retailer’s stores or depots and its suppliers. In reality, the supply chain encompasses all transactions between store and head office; head office processes including merchandising, forecasting, marketing and employee management; and communications with customers through the till, Internet or via loyalty schemes.

In the past few years, retailers have been busy bringing many of these diverse and often unconnected processes together making common data available to all parties. They are implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to integrate core applications such as financials, human resources and merchandising in recognition of the fact that all these areas affect each other.

To create an infrastructure for greater integration, data sharing and ultimately collaboration, retailers have also created intranets – democratic, easy-to-use networks that can be accessed by anyone with a computing device, including PCs, lap tops and hand-helds. This enables store managers and staff to improve their decision making based on access to current data as well as to colleagues in other parts of the business.

Intranets are also proving their worth by cutting the cost of training. Staff turnover in retailing tends to be high and the cost of delivering training to stores spread over a wide area is both high and time consuming. Using intranets, multimedia self-administered training materials can be delivered direct to the stores and updated regularly to respond to changes in local technology, store operations procedures and customer demand.

Business operations

Like many distributed organisations, many retailers have built up relational database capacity in each area of their business. Applications backed by OLTP databases include merchandising, forecasting and planning, warehousing and logistics, financials and electronic data interchange (EDI) and customer loyalty schemes. Often there is no consistency in the choice of database, operating system or end user analysis tools. Even where database decisions are centralised, distributed databases may contain different levels of historic information and different query tools may show the status of that information inconsistently.
This situation has often led to replication of tasks, a lack of data sharing and problems with enforcing an enterprise-wide data strategy.

Increasingly, retailers are using applications that are pretuned to access commonly used data. These applications are also dedicated to specific tasks available by store and department, and connected via email and file transfer. Because most of these applications require little training, it is possible to include a much wider range of users within the organisation as well as outside it. Suppliers now have access to company intranets and can share a consistent view of data. This extends as far as end customers who may be communicating with retailers via email and Internet over the public networks.

Typical examples in retailing cover the broad processes within the organisation that will apply data to operational tasks. These include:

· Store operations such as labour scheduling, back and front office (including loyalty);

· Merchandise management;

· Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): ERP software is a key enabler of Digital Nervous Systems and the value chain. The increasing investment in ERP software is driven by the need for companies to have a transactional backbone to support the strategic systems such as supply chain management or front-office applications. Business applications within an ERP solution work seamlessly together to ensure a single version of the truth in any area.

Example 1: Key indicators (sales, stockout and markdown history)

Подпись: Using SQL Server, retailers can dramatically improve their stock management by ensuring that data moves seamlessly across all relevant applications, keeps them up to date, monitors and alerts all actions and reaches users in head office, store and warehouse, and external supplier.

Using SQL Server, retailers can dramatically improve their stock management by ensuring that data moves seamlessly across all relevant applications, keeps them up to date, monitors and alerts all actions, and reaches users in head office, store and warehouse, and external suppliers.

To achieve this, users performing different tasks in the stock management chain must be supplied with data. These users include store managers, section heads, personnel manager and staff. Often, the store manager will use data to manage these various managers and staff. Elsewhere, data will be distributed directly to users via PCs, scanners and other hand-held devices. As a result, managers will have increased interaction with head office, to request spreadsheets and data marts. All requests are documented and audited and data is replicated ensuring that there is always one version of the truth in any part of the business.

In this way the retailer can monitor the effectiveness and profitability of almost every product sold and process undertaken both in store, at head office and in the warehouse. In this example, SQL Server is the ideal database solution because it is scaleable across the internal user and application chain, enabling retailers to distribute products, services and data consistently to all its stores.

Example 2: Loss prevention

SQL Server is the appropriate tool for providing data to support ad hoc processes that may only be performed from time to time and where the sequence of events is different each time.

For instance, store managers will regularly look at ways to reduce losses in areas where profits are falling. In any store, a proportion of fresh goods has to be thrown away or marked down but if the proportion is too high the individual store’s profits will be affected (particularly if customers return items that have perished), leaving the store manager to make some quick local decisions.

The store manager can use the company intranet to find out how to resolve the problem. He can also compare with other stores in the group to find out what levels of loss they are experiencing for key lines. He discovers that figures are high for certain items due to the fact that suppliers have changed their storage and packing procedures, leading to the goods going off sooner. He also downloads a spreadsheet from head office that provides the pattern of shrinkage for particular products over a period of time.

As a result, supplier service level agreement and supply terms can be adjusted via the retailer’s Internet-based supplier information line. Head office supplier accounts would also be adjusted automatically to ensure that the supplier carries his share of the losses incurred by the retailer. In this way, the impact of the initial findings automatically updates all other related systems.

Example 3: Labour scheduling (matching staff coverage to customer needs)

Retailers have been automating labour scheduling for years but only more recently have they identified the customer service opportunities. Labour scheduling is a data-intensive application and depends on access to several databases, including personnel records, existing labour scheduling, individual EPOS station records and wages.

Using data from all these sources, the store manager can improve customer service by allocating staff in tune with the number of customers in store at any one time. He will then be in a position to improve customer loyalty and even to encourage customers to spend a higher proportion of their weekly grocery budget in the store.

By improving customer service through more effective staff allocation, the store manager runs the risk of exceeding the number of store hours he has been allocated by head office. Using spreadsheets from the labour scheduling applications, the store manager can create a more accurate picture of how staff are performing and provide head office with proof that increased staff hours can coincide with an increase in store turnover.

Подпись: All labour scheduling decisions that affect staff can
be managed using the company intranet. Retailers can keep their employees informed and up-to-date on promotions, company policies and employment opportunities, and disseminate information quickly around their organisation.

All labour scheduling decisions that affect staff can be managed using the company intranet. Retailers can keep their employees informed and up-to-date on promotions, company policies and employment opportunities, and disseminate information quickly around their organisation.

Some of the direct benefits of making more effective use of automated labour scheduling systems and intranets are:

· The ability to focus more staff on customer-facing tasks;

· Improved customer service;

· Reduced overall checkout hours to reduce or reallocate labour costs;

· Reduced training costs.

Commerce and relationships

Retail databases in the past five years have moved from being simple transactional repositories to dynamic sources of information that will help retailers make decisions about customer loyalty, supplier performance, product profitability and store assortment. They are now integrating these databases to enable them to move beyond traditional store sales where only limited market knowledge was required. Now the consumer is being reached by telephone, fax and Internet. To perform a single remote transaction, a retailer may be relying on data from as many as ten different sources, including EPOS, product file, merchandising, warehousing, credit checking, EFTPOS, order processing, order fulfilment, delivery and loyalty points calculation.

But while retailers retain their own knowledge bases and processes, they will increasingly need to collaborate beyond the enterprise with suppliers and business partners to make better decisions and improve both business operation and customer satisfaction. By building collaborative extranets, retailers begin to build a value chain that enables all parties to contribute to key processes using inexpensive networks such as the Internet, multiple databases, local applications and most types of computing device.

Typical examples in retailing cover the broad processes within the organisation that will enable it to trade over public and private networks with both customers and suppliers. These include direct marketing, business-to-business (replenishment, forecasts, promotions, new products, procurement,) and business-to-consumer (electronic retailing).
Example 1: Internet commerce

While there remains a large gap between the current value of consumer purchases over the Internet and future estimates, the gap is closing fast. Low cost ISP services and the prospects for web TV are boosting the market quickly and, in the US, Christmas 1998 was a boom time for Internet retailers as consumers overcame their concerns about data privacy and credit card fraud, and placed their orders online.

Consumer online commerce is a classic case for the integration of data, systems and channels as retailers seek to ensure that their new channels are fully integrated with existing fulfilment channels, databases and internal departments, as well as third parties such as suppliers, fulfilment houses and delivery companies.

With full integration for online systems, retailers can expect to provide an infrastructure that will delight customers, give them competitive advantage and shorten their return on investment timetables.

Example 2: Customer relationships across non-store channels

Direct marketing and selling online represents a huge opportunity for businesses to reach a broader set of customers, build customer loyalty, reduce costs and increase revenues.

While head office will perform the macro-analysis to determine new customer segments to market and the marketing department may handle campaigns, the store will increasingly be involved in marketing as it operates the personal interface with customers and provides feedback about existing relationships.

A mechanism is required that will enable head office, marketing and stores to exchange information and manage processes as part of a single strategy that enables each user to contribute.

Retailers taking this route include, Dixons, GIB, Décathlon, Carphone Warehouse, Spar, PRODI, and Barnes and Noble who have all chosen the Microsoft platform with SQL Server, as the foundation of their direct selling solutions.

A number of software solutions are available to extend Microsoft’s Internet commerce platform for marketing and selling directly to customers and businesses online. Up to 30 companies are building payment solutions for Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition for markets around the world. SET, SSL, Internet, leased line, and dial-up solutions are available.

Many other partners extend Microsoft’s Internet Commerce platform in different areas such as enhanced personalisation and advertising products, order management, electronic software distribution, and connectivity to fulfilment systems.

Example 3: Value chain

The value chain encompasses all parties involved in the development and delivery of goods and all the processes from raw materials to final consumption. In a typical product manufacturing scenario (or when global retailers become manufacturers), the parties include raw material suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, resellers or retailers and consumers.

The chain in value chain can be misleading. It can look like a simple linear flow of information. But in an ideal Internet commerce situation, this linear structure could potentially be converted to a more dynamic structure, enabling much stronger flows of information for the ultimate benefit to the customer.

Back-end integration to accounting and ERP systems is also essential for the value chain scenario of corporate purchasing, and direct marketing and selling. EDI vendors who help bridge existing EDI systems with online commerce are joined by transportation, distribution and catalogue management firms to help provide complete solutions for trading across the value chain.

Value chain is also the extension of corporate purchasing for direct goods and services used in the product manufacturing or service development process. In the near future, the lines between corporate purchasing and the value chain will fade. But, in this nascent market, there are some distinct differences between implementations.

Current value chain implementations focus on the use of the Internet to enable retailers and their suppliers and business partners to collaborate in the area of ECR processes encompassing replenishment, forecasts, promotions and new product introductions. Jointly, the value chain parties aim to boost customer service by planning, managing and measuring promotions through the exchange of sales, forecast and promotional information. Many companies have already reduced supply chain costs, cut out-of-stocks and improved supplier service.

The value chain initiative promoted by Microsoft, is both virtual and real. In addition to digital content, it depends on workflow procedures and management processes that span the entire definition of the Microsoft Digital Nervous System to cover people, processes, and customers and partners.

Benefits of this approach include:

· Process definition and control;

· Right information, right time, right place;

· Rapid feedback mechanism;

· Process efficiency and standardisation;

· The encouragement a cross-functional approach.

Customer management and the retail DNS

Customer relationship management (CRM) is an excellent example of the Digital Nervous System in action. It encompasses all activities that turn casual consumers into customers so that they will buy again. All activities refers to any contact with customers. Therefore even staff who have no direct customer management responsibilities will be involved in CRM activities, including marketers, merchandisers, category managers and other head office staff.

CRM includes all activities that enable customers to:

· Find you;

· Get to know you;

· Keep in touch with you;

· Ensure they get what they want;

· Check they get what was promised.

In retailing, CRM is in its infancy and is being developed mainly through loyalty schemes that enable retailers to match EPOS data to personal details about customers, and so tune their marketing to the needs of the market. A handful of retailers in Europe are trying to make their loyalty schemes pay by using the data they have gathered from customers to engage in relationships through personalised direct mail and in-store offers. They have seen that loyalty is about recognising different customers in different ways and rewarding them for their custom, not just randomly and democratically through points, but personally.

Подпись: The Digital Nervous System enables all the people, processes, customers and partners within CRM to communicate with each other.

The Digital Nervous System enables all the people, processes, customers and partners within CRM to communicate with each other. Technologically, all these users can connect and contribute to corporate data using local applications and computing devices without concern for platform differences, data standards or application interoperability.

CRM also covers the three main business scenarios in a Digital Nervous System: knowledge management, business operations and commerce.

Knowledge management

Retailers are quickly realising that in order to discover who their customers are, what they buy, when, where and how often, they must trawl through massive volumes of data. Every single sales transaction over a period of months, even years must be collected. While existing transaction systems are perfectly capable of gathering and storing the data, they cannot be queried except at the very lowest level and queries can take days to return if their continuous operation is not to be compromised.

Retailers are using data warehouses to make two types of queries – operational queries that will enable them to improve merchandising and replenishment, and customer queries that will enable them to discover what their customers buy. The business benefits of being able to access detailed data have been shown to be enormous. Beyond this, data mining techniques are being used to discover new associations between data that will reveal hidden opportunities for business and customer relationship management.

To ensure a single version of the truth and ensure that the same customer is correctly identified regardless of when and how he gets in touch with the retailer, companies need to create a consolidated, operational view of the customer profile. This information can come from email, the web, POS data, loyalty card (or data from the suppliers). SQL Server 7.0 OLE DB capabilities can deal with data in multiple formats and allow heterogeneous queries.

Business operations

The information derived from this analysis needs to be made available to the marketing department to organise mailings and promotions; store managers to undertake local marketing; merchandisers to improve store replenishment; possibly to suppliers to assist in promotions management; and even to customers through web sites to enable them to manage their accounts.

Under CRM, data must be derived from multiple databases as part of a single strategy that will end replication of tasks and ensure that users get only the data they need.

Commerce

Managing customers via remote channels is a challenge because there is less direct contact than in the stores. But by using web sites creatively, it is possible not only to deliver high quality of service to customers but also to get their feedback. They will also handle some of the management of the relationship themselves, by accessing web sites that provide them with transaction and account details.

Improving service to customers also requires input from third parties. While retailers know about their customers’ individual shopping history, they do not necessarily understand the market trends outside their own business. By collaborating with suppliers as part of a value chain, retailers can understand the performance of customer segments, products, markets and brands throughout a region, country or across Europe.

Recognising this, a few retailers in Europe have set up collaborative extranets to exchange data with their suppliers. The results to date include faster response to potential stock outs during promotions, enabling retailers to meet customer demand more consistently. A high level of integration between RDBMS and the Internet, provided by SQL Server, is critical as multiple databases and applications must operate seamlessly to support any transaction or decision, wherever or however it is initiated.

Microsoft’s data sharing strategy

Customers are looking for solutions to business problems. Most database solutions just bring multiple layers of cost and complexity. Microsoft's strategy is to make SQL Server the easiest database for building, managing, and deploying business applications. This means providing a fast and simple programming model for developers, eliminating database administration for standard operations, and providing sophisticated tools for more complex operations.

Customers make investments in database management systems in the form of the applications written to that database and the education that it takes for deployment and management. That investment must be protected.

Customers make investments in database management systems in the form of the applications written to that database and the education that it takes for deployment and management. That investment must be protected: as the business grows, the database must grow to handle more data, transactions, and users, and provide the best performance/price ratio, whatever the store format. Customers also want to protect their investment as they scale database applications down to laptops and out to stores offices.

To meet these needs, Microsoft delivers a single database engine that scales from a mobile laptop computer running Windows® 95 or Windows 98, to terabyte symmetric multiprocessor clusters running Windows NT Server, Enterprise Edition. All these systems maintain the security and reliability demanded by mission-critical business systems.

Microsoft aims to help retailers build a single RDBMS that will support all database applications for on-line transaction processing and data mining/analysis, provide full compatibility with the company’s database strategy and achieve this cost effectively.

Microsoft is building its business from the store back to the data centre, as it has in other markets. Where most suppliers are concerned with historical data, Microsoft is satisfying retailers’ obsession with getting better data - sales, loyalty, credit, customer details - from the point of sale, in-store kiosks, self-scanning installations, self-checkouts and Internet shopping sites. Locally, the goal is to use data to make rapid decisions about shelf replenishment, labour scheduling and markdowns that must be made within a matter of hours if retailers are to respond to market conditions.

Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 overview

Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is a proven, low-cost solution for complex business problems on the Windows NT platform. It is a scaleable, high-performance database management system designed for distributed client/server computing.

The latest release of SQL Server – SQL Server 7.0 – brings to an end the view that data is a precious resource of use only to business analysts and statisticians and instead puts intelligence into the hands of desktop and remote users. Thanks to its scaleability, SQL Server 7.0 is cheaper than other database solutions, enabling retailers to move data processing, access and analysis out of the data centre to all parts of the business.

SQL Server is the engine of choice to achieve real-time access to complex and rich data gathered from EPOS. SQL Server is ideally suited to distribute data to end users and has the capacity to communicate with central databases at headquarters. Increasingly this technology is scaling to meet the needs of central database requirements.

SQL Server 7.0 lowers the total cost of ownership through features like multi-server, single-console management; event-based job execution and alerting; integrated security; and administrative scripting. This release also frees up the database administrator for more sophisticated aspects of the job by automating routine tasks. Combining these powerful management facilities with new auto-configuration features, SQL Server 7.0 is the ideal choice for branch automation and embedded database applications.

One of the most important areas of innovation is Microsoft's strategy for Universal Data Access. This is a platform for developing multi-tier, enterprise applications that require access to diverse relational and non relational data. This collection of software components interact using a common set of system-level interfaces called OLE DB, Microsoft's open specification for low-level interface to data. OLE DB is the next generation successor to the industry standard ODBC data access method.

Users can get information in Excel programmes from different RDBMS, in a totally consistent way. This limits the training required for advanced users. They also do not have to use different tools to get data from different providers. Moreover, if users need to get data from a legacy provider, then it is very easy to build a simple OLE DB driver using VB, Java or C/C++, and publish all information from this legacy system. All the tools used to publish on the Internet use the same technology.

OLE DB replaces DB Library as the internal interface for all SQL Server database operations. This allows heterogeneous queries that use the SQL Server query processor to perform with the same high level of performance as queries to the SQL Server storage engine.

As part of the overall ActiveStore Initiative, Microsoft provides technical guidance and platform integration tools and techniques, to design and build the software components that provide business and data services in an n-tier application architecture. The goal is to promote the construction of "best-of-breed" co-operating components from different retail industry ISVs and/or internal IT organisations which satisfy specific customer needs.

To achieve this vision, Microsoft is involved with the development of the RBI (Retail Business Interfaces), which will be completed in partnership with ActiveStore Core Team functions, by way of the business and data object subteam(s).

These RBI are a high-level description of the building blocks used to solve various design problems. These building blocks are related design solutions which can be applied to the problem of building co-operating business and data components. They will apply to specific architecture design problems such as ‘smart client’ or ‘thin client’ workstations deployed on LAN environments. In this manner, the ActiveStore architecture will enumerate certain common architecture design problems like disconnected users, mainframe connectivity etc and provide new solutions or evolve existing solutions to solve the new problems.

Important areas of leadership and innovation in SQL Server 7.0 include:

· First database to scale from the laptop to the enterprise using the same code base, offering 100% code compatibility – finally, retailers have a single version of how their business is performing at any moment in any store, warehouse and department;

· First database to support auto-configuration and self-tuning. This has been requested by many retailers who want the lowest cost of ownership while relying on a distributed and secured IT system;

·

Designed to support online analytical processing (OLAP) applications, OLAP Services is an essential component of SQL Server that serves a wide array of enterprise solutions.

First database with an integrated OLAP server – even remote and non-technical users (marketing manager, category manager) can access datasets and manipulate them using simple desktop applications. Integrated OLAP provides fast, efficient analysis of complex information in data warehouses. Designed to support online analytical processing (OLAP) applications, OLAP Services is an essential component of SQL Server that serves a wide array of enterprise solutions – from corporate reporting and analysis to data modeling and decision support:

- Intelligent aggregations provide significantly smaller databases for improved performance, and faster initial and incremental load times;

- Flexible storage architecture equally supports MOLAP, ROLAP and hybrid OLAP. Application requirements determine storage, not OLAP vendor debates;

- Ease of use and management lowers the cost of ownership;

- Numerous analysis functions provide comprehensive data modeling and decision support;

· First database with integrated Data Transformation Services. Data Transformation Services provides the functionality to import, export, and transform data between SQL Server and any OLE DB, OLE DB, or text file format. Using DTS, it is possible to build data warehouses and datamarts in SQL Server by importing and transforming data from multiple heterogeneous sources interactively or automatically on a regularly scheduled basis (requiring no user intervention). This means retailers can give seamless access to data from tills, customer records, suppliers records etc. even if they are in different sources. Custom transformation objects can be created that integrate into third-party applications. DTS supports data lineage, making it easy to track where and when data came from. DTS also enables the retailer to set up automatic import of data from legacy databases into SQL Server. This is important where the retailer has a variety of stores using a varying number of databases. All the data can then be pulled from multiple stores into head office each night;

· The Data Warehousing Framework, the first comprehensive approach to solving the metadata problem. Building a data warehouse is a complex process, including definition of the datamart, moving data, building and managing the cube, and giving an access to users. The framework is Microsoft’s integrated answer to all those challenges;

· First database to provide multi-server management for a large numbers of servers. This provides scaleable administration, from small sites requiring no administration all the way up to large, multi-sites. In retailing, companies can use the same administration policies in their back office and in the store;

· Widest array of replication options of any database. Retailers can replicate data from a central site down to an agency or mobile salesperson and then merge the update when the salesperson connects back to the corporate network. A remote worker such as a salesman or homeworker can work offline but ensure that data automatically gets replicated between his machine and the main server when he goes on-line. Replication enables a new class of mobile applications and can dramatically improve performance and reliability of existing distributed systems by reducing dependencies on centralised data. This ensures that the data warehouse, corporate intranet, and sales force automation application can share the same data and provide a single version of the truth;

· Best integration with Windows NT Server, Microsoft Office and BackOffice – by implementing SQL Server as their enterprise database, retailers are assured of full compatibility and open data access with existing enterprise platforms.

Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 features

Management

Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is set to become the leading Windows NT operating system-compatible database, bringing business advantage and improved decision-making to all levels of the organisation through the power of data warehousing, industry solutions and interoperability with Microsoft Office.

SQL Server 7.0 is easy to install, deploy, manage and use. It reduces the overall complexity of developing, managing and maintaining a database and gives easy access to enterprise data for custom reporting and executive decision-making.

Its powerful management tools, lower cost, easy administration, built-in data replication providing resilience and fast access, and open system architecture giving integration and interoperability, provide a superior platform for delivering effective information solutions for organisations of all sizes. It integrates seamlessly with other applications and services such as Microsoft BackOffice.

SQL Server 7.0 is easy to administer. No specialists are required to manage the product and its self-management and self-tuning features make it ideal for deploying into stores.

Advanced graphical-based management tools and powerful server-based job scheduling give retailers visual control over multiple servers and can automate remote operations for ‘lights-out’ command of your distributed environment. Built-in replication ensures that changes to data are synchronised automatically between databases.

Distribution of objects for common tasks and interfaces is handled automatically. Central administration enables retailers more easily to provide performance enhancements, enabling them to ensure consistency of applications and interfaces in all their stores.

The SQL Server 7.0 administration console

User operation

SQL Server 7.0 is flexible, and can adapt to retailers’ changing technical and business needs and ambitious growth plans. This flexibility is part of Microsoft’s Zero Administration for Windows strategy. Zero Admin also provides continuous operation; if a device breaks down, the store manager simply plugs in a new one and it will automatically update.

SQL Server allows database searching using English words rather than SQL commands. It converts an English query which can be formulated by non-expert users and converted automatically to SQL queries.

This query tool is a development tool, in order to let the developer create an English natural language interface. Users just type a question in plain English, and get an answer. They do not need to know anything about SQL.

For instance, a category manager can ask: “How many more/less packets of cornflakes did we sell in the Paris store in August than the Lyons store in September?” Rather than having to construct the query using a traditional computer query structure, they can simply enter it in plain English.

Users can query multiple databases from a single device, enabling them for instance to look at customers based on information residing in sales, customer, demographic and financial databases.

Office 2000 introduces new capabilities in Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel that allow Office users to build Access applications with full compatibility with SQL Server and allow Excel users to view and analyse relational and multidimensional data in SQL Server-based data marts and data warehouses.

Microsoft Excel in Office 2000 allows PivotTable dynamic views to access, manage and analyse relational and multidimensional data. This powerful interface allows customers to use Excel to generate business intelligence from datamarts and data warehouses built on SQL Server 7.0.

Scaleable

SQL Server 7.0 is a core part of building and deploying scaleable database solutions for line of business, mobile computing, electronic Commerce and data warehousing. It supports wide-scale distributed retail sites from POS devices to back-end store systems with ease of management, price/performance advantage over major database competitors and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

SQL Server is a scaleable, high-performance database management system that assists retailers to achieve real time access to complex and rich data gathered from the store and Internet point of sale. It is ideally suited to distribute data to end users as well as having the capacity to communicate with central databases at headquarters.

SQL Server 7.0 supports wide-scale distributed retail sites from POS devices to back-end store systems with ease of management, price/performance advantage over major database competitors and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

SQL Server also integrates well with Internet applications. It provides high-performance access to information on a company's web page; its new Web Assistant will populate the web server with SQL data, for distribution of company data on a private intranet or on the web. The Distributed Transaction Co-ordinator makes it easy to create distributed applications by automating transaction management across multiple servers, saving the time of individually coding client applications.

SQL Server 7.0 features row-level locking which will enable it to support third party applications from the likes of SAP, Baan and PeopleSoft. For these three leading ERP application providers, SQL Server 7.0 holds all of the records :

Benchmarks records (End 98):

· TPC-C (SMP) 20,223 TPM-C

· R/3 4.0B 2000 users

· Baan 3537 users

· PeopleSoft

- HRMS 5500 users

- FSOnline 2400 users

- Payroll 41,328 chks/hr

And more records:

· SQL Server 7, is the largest production database on the web, all platforms (TerraServer)

· TerraServer: 1.1TB

· 1.1 billion hits since June 98

· 918 million queries

The scaleability of SQL Server on Windows NT has been proved, and is bigger than the range of scaleability needed by a retailer. Further proof is that Microsoft uses only SQL Server boxes to manage its own business.

SQL Server provides support for very large (500 GB to one terabyte) databases on clustered SMP or MPP computers for data warehousing and complex data mining applications.

Distributed and mobile strategy

Remote users are using ever more powerful machines. 133 Mhz is now a minimum, giving users huge computing power and access to the Internet. SQL Server provides simple monitoring for thousands of users, including OLE DB users. Any loss of transactional consistency is offset by complete user autonomy and merging of data to produce single, uniform results.

On the desktop, the source code for SQL Server on both Windows NT and Windows 95/98, ensuring total compatibility.

SQL Desktop is a local version of SQL Server on PCs and EPOS aimed at store managers and small stores using hand-held devices to query back office or POS databases. SQL Desktop is a low cost option for high data availability.

A typical retailer can perform a number of different tasks, for example:

· Merchandisers can work with store managers to optimise merchandising by combining data from merchandise databases and local intelligence to give a richer, more local picture of stock requirements;

· Databases can be installed at the point of sale so that devices can be detached from the network and run in batch mode or over wireless networks;

· Databases can also be installed on store kiosks, enabling customers or staff to query store information, make requests and pay for goods;

· Customers can be equipped with hand held devices for self-scanning or product ingredient queries;

· SQL Desktop is ideal for small stores to undertake rapid stock taking. Local servers can then be updated so that data can be sent to head office, enabling store staff to query head office databases on-line.

Microsoft Data Engine

With the release of Microsoft Access 2000, users and developers will have the choice of two data engines in the product: an improved version of the existing Access engine, called Jet, or the Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE), which is compatible with SQL Server 7.0.

MSDE is an enabling technology that provides local data storage and offers compatibility with SQL Server. This is similar to Microsoft Jet, the data engine in Microsoft Access.

Developers who want to develop a single application that is also compatible with SQL Server but with a low memory footprint in a critical environment such as POS (point of sales), will want to use MSDE instead of Access run time.

Developers have a choice of two data engines

Requirement

SQL Server 7.0

(MSDE)

Access run time

(Jet 4.0)

Mission critical

7x24 support and QFE

Point-in-time recovery

Guaranteed transaction integrity

Built-in fault tolerance

Security integrated with Windows NT

No 7x24 support

Recoverable to last backup

No transaction logging

No integrated security

Scaleability

Virtually unlimited number of concurrent users

Terabyte levels of data

Transaction Logging

SMP Support

Performance issue with more than five users

2 GB Data

No transaction logging

No SMP support

Data warehousing

Transaction processing systems remain a key component of corporate database infrastructures for retailers that are processing millions of transactions daily and depend on raw data to inform all major decisions they make about business planning.

However, in order to improve their understanding of data and to extract more value, retailers are investing heavily in data warehousing. Microsoft's strategy is to reduce the cost and complexity of data warehousing while making the technology accessible to a wider audience.

Microsoft has established a comprehensive approach to the entire process of data warehousing. The goal is to make it easier to build and design cost-effective data warehousing solutions through a combination of technologies, services and vendor alliances.

The Microsoft Alliance for Data Warehousing is a coalition that brings together the industry's leaders in data warehousing and applications.
The Microsoft Data Warehousing Framework is a set of programming interfaces designed to simplify the integration and management of data warehousing solutions.

New product innovations in SQL Server 7.0 are improving the data warehousing process.

Data warehousing Microsoft has established a comprehensive Data Warehousing Framework to make it easier to build and design cost-effective data warehousing solutions through a combination of technologies, services and vendor alliances
Product enhancements	A variety of enhancements improve performance and flexibility for data warehousing applications. These include changes to the storage and relational engines, utilities, replication and administration. The new desktop edition of SQL Server allows users to do full data analysis in disconnected mode.
OLAP services	Integrated OLAP provides fast, efficient analysis of complex information in data warehouses. SQL Server OLAP Services delivers outstanding flexibility and integration with the Windows family, while lowering the total cost of building, deploying and managing OLAP applications. Features include: · Tight integration with Windows NT, Office and the BackOffice family; · Supports all forms of OLAP (relational, multi-dimensional, and hybrid); · Easy-to-use wizards and taskpads via Microsoft Management Console.
Data Transformation Services (DTS)	DTS simplifies the process of importing and transforming data from multiple, heterogeneous sources, either interactively or automatically. Custom transformation objects can be created that integrate into third-party applications. DTS supports data lineage, making it easy to track where and when data came from.
English Query	End users are given the ability to pose questions in English instead of forming queries with SQL statements. English Query is targeted for developers of custom applications.
Microsoft Management Console (MMC)	The MMC improves integration and ease of use for data warehousing with wizards and taskpads.
PivotTable Service (PTS)	PivotTable® Service is a companion to OLAP Services that provides desktop multi-dimensional analysis. It provides superior integration with the next version of Microsoft Excel, in-memory data and query caching, and cube persistence.
Repository	The Microsoft Repository is a common, open infrastructure for data warehousing applications, with a broad set of shared capabilities for schema and metadata. Microsoft is extending the Repository with information models for schema, data transformation, scheduling and OLAP.
Universal Data Access	Universal Data Access is Microsoft’s strategy for enabling high-performance access to a variety of information sources: OLE DB and ADO that build on the wide support for OLE DB.

Data warehousing

Microsoft has established a comprehensive Data Warehousing Framework to make it easier to build and design cost-effective data warehousing

solutions through a combination of technologies, services and vendor alliances

Feature

Description and benefits

Product enhancements

A variety of enhancements improve performance and flexibility for data warehousing applications. These include changes to the storage and relational engines, utilities, replication and administration. The new desktop edition of SQL Server allows users to do full data analysis in disconnected mode.

OLAP services

Integrated OLAP provides fast, efficient analysis of complex information in data warehouses. SQL Server OLAP Services delivers outstanding flexibility and integration with the Windows family, while lowering the total cost of building, deploying and managing OLAP applications. Features include:

· Tight integration with Windows NT, Office and the BackOffice family;

· Supports all forms of OLAP (relational, multi-dimensional, and hybrid);

· Easy-to-use wizards and taskpads via Microsoft Management Console.

Data Transformation Services
(DTS)

DTS simplifies the process of importing and transforming data from multiple, heterogeneous sources, either interactively or automatically. Custom transformation objects can be created that integrate into third-party applications. DTS supports data lineage, making it easy to track where and when data came from.

English Query

End users are given the ability to pose questions in English instead of forming queries with SQL statements. English Query is targeted for developers of custom applications.

Microsoft Management Console
(MMC)

The MMC improves integration and ease of use for data warehousing with wizards and taskpads.

PivotTable Service (PTS)

PivotTable® Service is a companion to OLAP Services that provides desktop multi-dimensional analysis. It provides superior integration with the next version of Microsoft Excel, in-memory data and query caching, and cube persistence.

Repository

The Microsoft Repository is a common, open infrastructure for data warehousing applications, with a broad set of shared capabilities for schema and metadata. Microsoft is extending the Repository with information models for schema, data transformation, scheduling and OLAP.

Universal Data Access

Universal Data Access is Microsoft’s strategy for enabling high-performance access to a variety of information sources: OLE DB and ADO that build on the wide support for OLE DB.

The SQL Server 7.0 cube editor

OLAP Services for SQL Server

OLAP Services for SQL Server is Microsoft’s On Line Application Processing server enabling OLAP, a key technology for data warehousing and decision support, helping it to become a commodity rather than niche technology. Designed to support online analytical processing (OLAP) applications, OLAP Services is an essential component of SQL Server that serves a wide array of enterprise solutions, from corporate reporting and analysis to data modelling and decision support.

OLAP Services for SQL Server’s inclusion within SQL Server is set to have an important impact on the retail industry. Analysts in the US are saying that the combination of OLAP Services for SQL Server and SQL Server will become the de facto method for building datamarts, data subsets aimed at business users.

OLAP Services for SQL Server makes OLAP affordable and easy to bring the benefits to a wider audience, both size of organisation and skill level of worker. OLAP Services for SQL Server supports multidimensional storage and navigation enabling users to perform rapid queries on large and complex relational databases.

OLAP Services incorporates intelligent aggregation selection; automatically choosing a subset of all possible aggregations from which the remaining aggregations can be quickly calculated when they are needed. This reduces dramatically the time taken to process any queries. Cubes can also be partitioned to spread data across several servers but data is seamlessly presented to the user as if it were stored in one place. This feature enables the cube designer to make the most effective and efficient use of existing data storage facilities.

It also supports plain English queries, making it easy to access for distributed users. Microsoft expects more than 60% of SQL Server 7.0 sales will be used for data analysis.

OLAP Services supports full Multidimensional OLAP, Relational OLAP, and Hybrid OLAP implementations, offering the OLAP database designer the opportunity to choose the model most appropriate to the needs of the organisation. The underlying data model or data models chosen by the cube designer are invisible to the client application and its user.

The ISV community is supporting OLAP Services for SQL Server. OLAP Services for SQL Server exposes OLE DB for OLAP, which means that the many client tools vendors supporting the API can access OLAP Services for SQL Server. OLAP client tools already announced and shipping beta products supporting OLE DB for OLAP include – Arbor, Knosys, Comshare, Hyperion, Cognos, Business Objects, Brio, Silvon and Seagate. For instance, Silvon Software, developer of the DataTracker business intelligence/data warehousing system, has announced its support for the Microsoft OLE DB for OLAP specification. Through a single OLAP client interface, customers will be able to access both the rapidly changing information maintained by DataTracker and the less variable information managed by OLAP Services for SQL Server.

The next version of Excel supports OLE DB and OLE DB for OLAP, which includes OLAP Services for SQL Server and numerous other OLAP providers (SAS, Applix TM/1, Silvon, etc).

A lot of leading retail ISVs are now developing on SQL Server 7.0, for the decision support system.

For instance ICL with Corema Express, launched late in 1998, is a shrink-wrapped PC software application based on Microsoft’s innovative SQL Server 7.0 database, which enables users to set up and run a customer analysis programme simply, quickly and cost-effectively. Typically, a marketing professional can be fully up and running with Corema EXPRESS, and reaping the benefits of the market intelligence that it provides, in just five days. What’s more, in a specialty chain of 80 stores, the product should cost no more than £20 per store per week to run. Research has shown that over the course of a year the top 20% of one retailer’s customers spent 50 times the amount of its bottom 20%. ICL’s Corema provides retailers with the opportunity to find out who these customers are, what they like, and to what incentives or approaches they might respond.

JDA with Retail IDEAS Suite of Applications covering Sales and Inventory Analysis, Daily (Flash) Sales, Promotional Analysis, On Order/In Transit Analysis, Planning/OTB Analysis, Point-of-Sale (POS)/Loss Prevention Analysis, Vendor Analysis, Special Event Analysis, Replenishment Analysis, Distribution Center Analysis, General Ledger Analysis, and Customer and Transaction Repositories.

In the supply chain area, Manugistic announced its Supply Chain Warehouse™ strategy to deliver sophisticated supply chain data warehousing and analysis capabilities. By embedding the powerful, scaleable and open online processing functionality in SQL Server 7.0, Manugistics' Supply Chain Warehouse will give decision-makers the ability to view, measure and analyse the performance of the entire supply chain, adopting a closed-loop system that bridges the gap between planning, execution and collaboration activities.

Data Transformation Services (DTS)

Data Transformation Services provides the functionality to import, export, and transform data between SQL Server and any OLE DB, ODBC, or text file format.

Data Transformation Services provides the functionality to import, export, and transform data between SQL Server and any OLE DB, ODBC, or text file format. Using DTS, it is possible to build data warehouses and data marts in SQL Server by importing and transforming data from multiple heterogeneous sources interactively or automatically on a regularly scheduled basis (requiring no user intervention). Custom transformation objects can be created that integrate into third-party products.

Importing and exporting data is the process of exchanging data between applications by reading and writing data in a common format. For example, DTS can import data from an ASCII text file or an Oracle database into SQL Server. Alternatively, data can be exported from SQL Server to an ODBC data source, or a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

A transformation is the set of operations applied to source data before it can be stored in the destination. For example, DTS allows calculating new values from one or more source fields, or even breaking a single field into multiple values to be stored in separate destination columns. Transformations make it easy to implement complex data validation, scrubbing, and enhancement during import and export.

DTS supports multi-step packages, where multiple files can be processed separately, then brought together in a single, final step. Records in a file can be broken up into multiple records in the destination, or multiple records in the source can be aggregated into single records in the destination.

DTS is also integrated with the Microsoft Repository, where it stores metadata, the Data Transformation packages and data lineage, including sources of all transformed data.

Data Transformation Services only moves schema and data between heterogeneous data sources. Triggers, stored procedures, rules, defaults, constraints, and user-defined data types are not converted between heterogeneous data sources.

SQL Server 7.0 as the database of choice

With SQL Server 7.0, the balance of power may shift further in the direction of Microsoft. Retail research firm, RMDP, is already saying that Microsoft will take 42 per cent of the RDBMS market by 1999, overtaking Oracle with 34 per cent and IBM with 11 per cent.

Developers like SQL Server and 38 per cent are estimated to choose Microsoft against 23 per cent for Oracle, with only four per cent for DB/2 which clearly lacks a convincing channel strategy but does at least have the internal resources to cover most requirements.

SQL Server is becoming the database platform of choice for leading retail independent software vendors (ISVs), according to RMDP.

According to a report by retail consultants, RMDP, the league table of top-performing RDBMS by TCP-C Price/Performance rating is SQL Server Enterprise Edition 6.5/7.0 followed by Oracle, Sybase, DB2 and Informix in that order. While the league table changes regularly, SQL Server remains at number one.

Transaction Processing Council

The Transaction Processing Council (TPC) has shown that the top 40 system configurations based on hardware, software and RDBMS all incorporate Microsoft SQL Server, Enterprise Edition 6.5 and measure both performance and total system running cost.

IDC

IDC has also looked into cost of ownership and has applied its CtU methodology to a range of RDBMS products to determine that SQL Server is 44 per cent less expensive than the next RDBMS running on a site by site basis when the overall costs of hardware, software, LAN, support staff, installation and training are considered over five years.

Forrester

Microsoft expects more than 60 per cent of SQL Server 7.0 sales to be used for data analysis, not transaction applications. US research firm, Forrester says that this is not a surprise and it expects analysis database sales to grow at 40 per cent a year, far ahead of the staid 6 per cent growth of transaction systems.

Forrester also says that, by 2002, 60 per cent of users’ multivendor solutions will come through assemblers committed to the Microsoft apps platform. Forrester spoke to senior IT executives at 50 Fortune 1,000 companies about their plans to use Microsoft’s platform technologies: Windows NT Server, SQL Server, and COM/DCOM. It found strong commitment to NT – by 2001, 84 per cent of interviewees would use it as the server for some enterprise business applications. By 2001, roughly half of interviewees would be more likely to buy an application if the vendor selling it was committed to using Microsoft’s platform.

Gartner Group

GartnerGroup finds Oracle8 costs 2.8 to 12.5 times more than SQL Server.

Executive summary
SQL Server 7.0 offers a breadth of functionality at a fraction of the cost of Oracle. The large price differential, together with the increasing number of business solutions built on SQL Server through ISV and VAR programs, will make SQL Server the market share leader on Windows NT by the year 2000.

Lower price
Oracle8 Enterprise Edition costs about 2.9 to 12.5 times more than SQL Server 7.0 Enterprise Edition. Customers enjoy the largest savings by licensing Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Enterprise Edition through the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, which involves a three-year commitment to licensing Microsoft products.

Enterprises also can save money from the ease of integration of SQL Server with Microsoft Office and BackOffice products and its low total cost of ownership (TCO) with respect to Oracle.

Unparalleled quality, performance, scaleability and flexibility

SQL Server enables independent software vendors and customers to build and deploy scaleable database solutions for electronic Commerce, line of business, mobile computing and data warehousing.

There is a large and growing community of ISVs with experience of the new release of SQL Server, which have or are developing solutions based on a variety of Microsoft technology. Research company, RMDP has already shown in its report on retail databases that solution developers tend to prefer SQL Server in creating applications.

SQL Server 7.0 is not simply an upgrade of SQL Server 6.5 but a major advance. To take advantage, users require an on disk change. In return, they will be installing their database platform for the next 20 years and be offered unparalleled quality, performance, scaleability and flexibility. Reliability is assured; over 3,000 user have tested the beta 2 version of SQL Server 7.0 and 30,000 customers for Beta3.

European retailers achieve competitive edge with Microsoft solutions

Knowledge management

Delhaize Le Lion

110-unit Belgian supermarket chain, Delhaize Le Lion has been using SQL Server 7.0 as the engine of a data warehouse, to provide ever-greater amounts of data to internal users, as well as to its customers which are members of its loyalty scheme. SQL Server has enabled the company to take incremental steps towards a full data warehouse and so retain flexibility as requirements have developed. SQL Server has also enabled Delhaize to think seriously about distributing information via Internet and intranet.

At the same time, Delhaize welcomes the fact that, because its new infrastructure is entirely open, it can adopt new front-end applications without changing its database structure.

Erwin Tanghe, business and information support manager for Delhaize, says: “With the Data Transformation Services, the OLAP Services and replication, we can extract data from our operational system, build a fast multi-dimensional datastore and replicate data from the data warehouse to departmental datamarts."

La Fnac

French retailer of books, recorded music, digital information and photographics, La Fnac, is improving customer service by looking in detail at store data. The company has a repository of data relating to some 740,000 staff and more than 11 million customers from 1997 alone. It has been using SQL Server to create a datamart to analyse the data in depth. The company can offer its customers a wider range of goods, improve the way it displays goods on the shelves and develop more support services for its staff, while still maintaining its sales margin.

The first results from the project have revealed some relationships between data which have never been suspected, and confirmed others which seemed intuitively likely. It has been shown for example, that the people who buy books on technology are also enthusiastic purchasers of books on management. La Fnac has also fine tuned its understanding of how photography enthusiasts go about buying equipment.

La Fnac has found SQL Server to perform excellently with large volumes of data, provide a tariff structure ideally suited to datamart projects and integrate well with Windows NT Server. “Thanks to our ability to exploit this mine of data, we can improve our customer knowledge and respond better to their demands,” says Victor Jachimowicz, market research director at La Fnac.

Spector

Belgian retail, wholesale and photo-processing group chain, Spector Photo Group, has created a centralised retail management architecture using Microsoft technology to manage its retail operations across Belgium, Germany and Hungary. The new infrastructure will provide Spector with a platform for future expansion through multiple channels - with 465 stores and 2,420 franchise outlets and concessions, the company also operates a thriving mail order business.

Following several acquisitions of other retailers, Spector was faced with the challenge of integrating multiple technology platforms, based on AS/400, Siemens, PC-architecture, and IBM mainframe. Even though most of the individual businesses were adequately served by their own infrastructure, each had a Y2K problem, so the need for change became urgent. Spector therefore decided that standardising its IT infrastructure under a single platform and integrating the different applications would be the most efficient method of enterprise management. As a result, it is utilising a Microsoft NT-based platform and a SQL Server-based database, to provide SAP for sales and logistics, new production systems, data warehousing and decision support, and merchandising and logistics to serve the stores.

The database running across all these areas has been standardised on SQL Server 7.0. Spector was concerned at the lack of previous retail implementations of SQL Server but was won over by the overall benefits of the total solution.

Spector developed two new applications, both accessing the SQL Server database. These applications consisted of internally-written home-grown store management software solution incorporating merchandising and logistics, and an internally-developed data warehouse for analysis to assist in the generation of key business indicators. Powerplay and Impromptu front-end data analysis tools from Cognos were added to the data warehouse for decision support.

Future plans include the implementation of a new intranet to enable closer links between head office and the stores, including Windows 2000 and email. It also plans to show its franchisees the benefits of Microsoft technology in store and communications.

Business operations

Décathlon

200-unit, French sports chain, Décathlon has moved away from a networked system based on AS/400s to the client/server world, and installed a message server system to improve internal and external communication. Stock details and accounting information is now available to everyone, from almost any computing device. As a result, it is now possible for shop managers and sales staff to go to any workstation, call up the trading figures for any single day, and export them to Excel. Staff can then use this data in any way they wish to support their job functions.

“Communication was pretty open, but we wanted to standardise the workstations in the branches on an open technology that would let us base our applications on world standards for messaging and business management. It was critical, too, to create consistency between the management applications and the staff support applications. Previously, the workstations in the branches had no way of accessing the business tools software,” says Laurent Lobeau, leader of Project Mykérinos.

The company wanted to make use of emerging business tools, so the selection of SQL Server for the database was straightforward. The goal was to work smoothly towards ensuring that the data stored in the AS/400s was fully exploited in the new IT environment. Specific software solutions would be developed with the help of Power Builder.

An open communications platform running under Windows NT was put in place, together with an Exchange messaging system linked to the company’s business tools. The project’s management team was looking
to support shop managers, sales staff, receptionists, cashiers and workshop managers and was concerned mainly with the staff support functions of Mykérinos. “We’ve been able to standardise a communications platform around Windows, as well as client/server management tools developed on SQL Server with Power Builder for the client side,” continues Laurent Lobeau.

Marks & Spencer

UK high street retail chain, Marks & Spencer is building the next generation of store and head office systems based on Microsoft technology. Projects include the transformation of enterprise communications, a closer
working relationship with suppliers to improve customer service in stores and new store EPOS systems. Windows NT Workstations will be the standard desktop, using browsers to deliver applications, a process described by M&S as ‘thin’ but not full network computing. All data requirements, at head office, in the stores and out to suppliers, will be powered by SQL Server.

M&S has now upgraded in head office from Windows 3.11 and Microsoft Mail to Windows NT and Exchange. The system was extended to the stores, the first major use of Exchange in a branch environment in the UK, giving store managers full email facilities and enabling head office to direct information of immediate concern.

An existing supplier management system has been extended to put contracts on-line and create a core reference for product history and content. M&S can drill down to get the full history of houseware and clothing products, enabling buyers to meet legal requirements, and manage and measure supplier quality control. Style files are a full record of products from concept to manufacture and contain sketches, pictures, definitions, component lists and packaging. Suppliers also have access to the system and can view their contracts and any changes made by M&S. This will cut lead times between contracting and supply of finished goods, enabling the company to bring new products to the market much faster.

In pilots to test New Store Infrastructure, the new ICL-based EPOS systems in 300 stores, M&S found that transactions are processed 10 per cent quicker than before, so that 95 per cent of customers transactions are processed within two minutes compared to 60 per cent under the old system, enabling M&S to reduce queues, and boost customer service. The system is more functional and yet easier to use, and staff training times have been cut by a half. The system also offers centralised price look up file ensuring consistent and accurate pricing across the stores.

New Store Infrastructure is based on Microsoft Windows NT Server operating system and a suite of software products including SQL Server. This is linked to the back office store and personnel management applications running on Windows NT Servers in each store. The system will provide basket level sales data through a data transfer system which is being piloted and will begin design shortly, using Microsoft Message Queue Server. It will also allow M&S as a whole to be more responsive to customers, provide more information about products and services, support Year 2000 and euro currency initiatives, and allow for a more flexible supply chain in the future.

Commerce

Sainsbury's

400-unit, UK supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, has been developing an Internet-based value chain by collaborating with its suppliers to improve supply chain activities such as promotions, supplier service levels and EDI.

By sharing data, Sainsbury’s expects both parties to improve store replenishment as well as profit from promotions and new product introductions. The company has already reduced supply chain costs, cut out-of-stocks by 30 per cent and improved supplier service by 25 per cent.

Sainsbury’s employs the Internet to obtain a faster, cheaper and more dynamic way of exchanging data than its existing electronic data interchange (EDI) networks. These latest applications, which are powered by Windows NT Servers and run on SQL Server, are moving to Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition.

Intersport

Sports retailer, Intersport, with over 4,000 stores in 25 countries, distinguishes itself by the level of service it provides to its customers. Intersport in Germany, with 1080 stores, has been working with Microsoft Solutions Provider, Ipex to install its SQL Server-based Intersys solution, to improve customer service even further as the company faces competition, a change in the way customers shop and shrinking life cycles for new products.

Intersys E-Commerce provides a retail management system and on-line ordering systems so that all processes involved in a single customer order are integrated. As importantly, with a decentralised management topology, decisions about products, purchasing, pricing and promotions can now be made independently by group members, without compromise to service or quality.

Ipex has provided a standardised multimedia catalogue which can be created from any data format, within a few days, a unique search engine that allows searching for comparable products from multiple suppliers, accompanied by detailed product descriptions. Ordering is on-line and is fully supported by fulfilment, shipment tracking and Return Merchandise Authorisation. New systems integrate with legacy systems such as financials and logistics.

Ipex has also provided a new physical store infrastructure including purchasing, inventory, automated replenishment, POS, open-to-buy, customer relationship management and report generator. Both physical and virtual shopping are complemented by interactive shop-floor data kiosks and backed up with electronic fund transfer and payment clearance, and customer relationship and loyalty systems.

SQL Server drives a web-based data warehousing with decision support system to provide product auctioning, price bids and requests for quotation.

Bart Smit

Dutch toy store chain, Bart Smit’s commercial web site, built by ICL Networks, is based entirely on Microsoft technology including SQL Server 6.5, upgrading to SQL Server 7.0. The web site is Belgian.

Bart Smith chose SQL Server for its seamless integration with head office database applications. Bart Smit also sees great advantages in the fact that the web site runs purely on Microsoft technology. Site Server can present product information from the SQL Server database to the visitor of the site, together with the multimedia data stored on the Windows NT Server-system. Site Server then generates new web pages for each individual user on the basis of the actions of that visitor, for instance clicking on a button, indicating preferences, or wanting to pay for the items in his or her shopping basket. Web pages are no longer hand coded in HTML. There is a database with product information, such as pictures, descriptions, standard prices, Internet prices, and the pages are built dynamically and using templates. The database also generates the entire logistic process, from picking lists to dispatch instructions.

Bart Smit now thinks the time is right to stimulate interest in the Internet and welcomes the extra capacity and functionality of SQL Server 7.0 to provide a stable foundation for electronic Commerce.

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