Antares

Client Problem:

No business can make good decisions without having the right information available.

The University Co-operative Bookshop (the Co-op) is the largest provider of educational resources in Australia, has 42 branches across Australia, and over 1.3 million members.

The Co-op came to Antares Solutions with 4 main needs:

1. Better integration of data on sales, cost discounts and gross margin
2. The ability to perform ad hoc analysis
3. To improve the efficiency and accuracy of business information
4. To enhance its business information channel and user experience

Our Solution:

Antares Solutions introduced automated processing and an executive dashboard for key business users across the company:

1. Monitoring of results
2. Single version of truth
3. Measured deliverables
4. Automation to reduce cost

We built the dashboard using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and SQL Server Analysis Services.

Benefits:

Monitoring of results - Key business decision makers can quickly monitor results, eg, overall gross margin percentage over product categories. Specific units get what they need quickly because the dashboard groups results for them.

Single version of truth - One single view of information to each business unit, reducing the need for separate reports or spreadsheets in each unit.

Measured deliverables - Managers can focus on top priorities, such as gross margin KPI for branches.

Automation to reduce cost - The dashboard and reducing manual processing helps the Co-op focus where it needs to and reduces data error.

"Antares Solutions provided an executive dashboard for us linking in with our intranet and summarising our key data whilst allowing drill-down investigation. We're very happy with it."

Anthony Grant, IT Manager - Co-op Bookshop