Customers achieving Breakthrough Insight with SQL Server 2012: Volvo Car Corporation, ABB SpA, Klout, Stein Mart and Menlo Worldwide Logistics
Last week at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit in Los Angeles we heard from customers such as Revlon, Menlo Worldwide Logistics, LA Fitness and Great Western Bank talking about the benefits of using Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) solutions to solve a variety of business issues. Given the great momentum we are seeing with customers using SQL Server BI capabilities and following the recent announcement of the general availability of SQL Server 2012, I thought it would be useful to put together some of the recent SQL Server 2012 BI, big data and data warehouse customer stories. Each of the summaries below has a link to the individual case studies, but if you want to search or filter on all the SQL Server customer stories, visit the SQL Server website.
Volvo Car Corporation
When Volvo Car Corporation split off from Ford in 2010, it needed to develop its own stand-alone IT environment in some areas. At the same time, the company wanted to improve its business intelligence (BI) capabilities and operational efficiency. So Volvo decided to prototype a Microsoft data management solution that simplifies its IT environment, provides graphical self-service reporting capabilities, and improves collaboration.
“Instead of having a few expert users, with Power View we can give BI to entire departments.” IT Architect, Volvo Car Corporation
Klout
Klout wanted to give consumers, brands, and partners faster, more detailed insight into hundreds of terabytes of social-network data. It also wanted to boost efficiency. To do so, Klout deployed a business intelligence solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise and Apache Hadoop. As a result, Klout processes data queries in near real time, minimizes costs, boosts efficiency, increases insight, and facilitates innovation.
“When it comes to business intelligence, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 demonstrates that the platform has continued to advance and keep up with the innovations that are happening in big data.” David Mariani, VP of Engineering
Menlo Worldwide Logistics
Con-way subsidiary Menlo Worldwide Logistics intends to drive double-digit growth of its supply chain services business over the next 3–4 years. It expects business intelligence (BI) to be a main driver of new customer value and growth but has not been satisfied with the capabilities of its existing IBM Cognos and DB2 software platform. To jump-start its BI effort, Menlo is deploying the Microsoft BI platform, which will help it attract business with improved analytics and new value-added customer services.
” The flexible Microsoft BI approach enables our end-user teams to tailor solutions to meet the unique requirements of our customers while taking advantage of a common, consistent, and cost-effective platform” Mark Molau, Senior IT Manager for Menlo Worldwide Logistics
ABB S.p.A.
ABB S.p.A. is owned by ABB, a global power and automation company headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. To meet business demands, ABB S.p.A. needed to give employees better business intelligence (BI) capabilities. The company also wanted to consolidate its data to give employees a single view of business and customer information. ABB S.p.A. is implementing a Microsoft BI and data warehouse solution that will provide better business insight and give employees a unified data view. The solution also gives the company the flexibility to add analytical tools going forward.
“Using the SQL Server Power View tool and the BI Semantic Model in SQL Server 2012, our employees will be able to easily create multidimensional reports, providing better insight into business and customer data.” Andrea Franchi, BI Technical Lead, ABB S.p.A
Stein Mart
Stein Mart, a nationwide department store, needed better access to business data to set prices each week. By implementing a Microsoft data warehouse and business intelligence (BI) solution, the company can manage information more efficiently and cut reporting time from hours to minutes. The solution is easy to use and manage, and the company has cut its total cost of ownership by more than 60 percent.
“The alternative solutions considered would have required purchasing separate reporting, ETL and integration, and database management tools. We’ve reduced our total cost of ownership about $600,000 with a Microsoft BI solution,” Ilan Wajsman, Director of IT at Stein Mart
Which other are customers using SQL Server?
Visit the customer story page on the SQL Server website which allows you to filter on over 200 customer stories by Industry, Country, Solution Workload, Partner or SQL Server version. This will help you find the customer stories most suited to the scenario you are working on.
David Hobbs-Mallyon
Senior Marketing Manager , SQL Server Marketing
