Preview

Mysupermarket - Building a Business of Data Warehousing Foundations

Best Essays
Open Document
Open Document
3363 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Mysupermarket - Building a Business of Data Warehousing Foundations
BUILDING A BUSINESS MODEL ON DATA WAREHOUSING FOUNDATIONS:

Executive Summary

mySupermarket is a grocery shopping and comparison website which aims to provide customers with the best price for their shopping. This report examines how data warehousing provided mySupermarket with the foundation in which to build a successful enterprise, and allowed a subsequent expansion into the ‘business intelligence’ sector. The research draws attention to the problems and limitations that mySupermarket encountered including; coping with diverse sources of data streams, customer loyalty issues, achieving real-time data, data integrity and generating a sustainable revenue stream. These problems were tackled respectively through; building their own data warehouse, adopting a CRM strategy underpinned by their warehouse, adopting Microsoft’s SQL software, supermarket website ‘crawling’, offering ‘targeted’ advertising space and the realisation that the granularity of detail they offered, would allow them to expand into the ‘business intelligence’ sector. The report appreciates the importance of storing data, but concludes that data itself is the prerequisite to success, and that good management is needed to convert this data into meaningful information. It is therefore a combination of data warehousing and good management that has enabled mySupermarket to become a successful venture.

Introduction

“On the 31st August 2006, entrepreneur Johnny Stern received a seven-figure sum from investors to transform the way consumers shop for their groceries. From this, the price comparison site mySupermarket.co.uk was born and the company has utilised data warehousing to give consumers access to cheaper grocery shopping. The venture has not been without its problems, however four years on the company has withstood Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’[1] and grown into a c.£10m company...”

mySupermarket is a grocery shopping and comparison site that allows customers to



References: Beyon-Davies, P (2004) – Database Systems, 3rd edition, Palgrave, Basingstoke, pp. 527-538 and 547-553 Bose, R (2002) – Customer Relationship Management: Key concepts for IT success, Vol Blastland, M & Dilnot, A (2007) – The Tiger That Isn’t: Seeing a World Through Numbers Burchill, J (Aug 2010) – The Independent: So the Prince of Green Hypocrites is going on tour Cooper et al. (2000) – Data Warehousing Supports Corporate Strategy at First American Corporation Vol. 24, No. 4 Champion, D & Coombs, C (2010) – Handout: BSC070 Enterprise Information Systems Cheeseman, G (June 2010) – Triple Pundit: Is It Ethical For BP To Buy Oil-Spill-Related Google Search Terms? Davenport, T IEEE Computer (Dec 1991) – Special Issue on Heterogeneous Distributed Database Systems, 24(12) Inmon, W.H Kimball, R & Ross, M (2002) – The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling, 2nd edition Martin et al., (2005): 193 – Managing Information Technology 5th Edition, Pearson Education Inc, pp Mintel Intelligence (Oct 2009) - Web Aggregators, UK Murray, G (1994) - The Second 'Equity Gap ': Exit Problems for Seed and Early Stage Venture Capitalists Perry, J (Nov 2009) – Dunnhumby: A lifetime of loyalty? RetailWeek Poole, J et al Smith, A (1959) – ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ Vandermay, J (2001) – Considerations for Building a Real-time Data Warehouse ----------------------- [1] A term coined by Adam Smith in his first book ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ (1959)

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Brown, C. V., DeHayes, D. W., Hoffer, J. A., Martin, E. W., & Perkins, W. C. (2012). Managing information technology (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ, NJ: Prentice Hall/Pearson…

    • 538 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    O’Brien, J. A. (2003). Managing Information Technology in the Business Enterprise (6th ed.). New York, New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies.…

    • 1483 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Ibm 211 Week 3

    • 4383 Words
    • 18 Pages

    IBM Telecommunications Data Warehouse V8.4 and IBM Health Plan Data Model V8.4 help accelerate development of cost-efficient industry data warehouse solutions…

    • 4383 Words
    • 18 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    References: Brown, C. V., Dehayes, D. W., Hoffer, J. A., Martin , E. W., & Perkins, W. C. (2012). Managing information technology for devry university. (Seventh ed., p. 7). Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.…

    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    University of Southease

    • 1414 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Saunders, K. P. (2013). In Managing and Using Information Systems. JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.…

    • 1414 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    | * IT department is not just one important department for the success of business intelligence of the bank. * The data fed into the warehouse helps IT department to better service the needs of the bank’s internal customers such as sales and marking departments. * However data warehouse which is managed by IT department act as an important source of the bank’s business intelligence.…

    • 341 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    An active data warehousing, or ADW, is a data warehouse implementation that supports near-time or near-real-time decision making. It is featured by event-driven actions that are triggered by a continuous stream of queries that are generated by people or applications regarding an organization or company against a broad, deep granular set of enterprise data. Continental uses active data warehousing to keep track of their company’s daily progress and performance. Continental’s management team holds an operations meeting every morning to discuss how their company is performing in regards to the data collected by their active data warehousing program. The management team believes, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure,” so they use active data warehousing to keep track of their customers experience while using Continental Airlines. The information that the management team uses to analyze their company in regards to customer relationship is on-time arrival, on-time departures, baggage handling, and other key performance indicators. Continental also uses active data warehousing for revenue management, revenue accounting, flight operations, fraud detection and airline security. Continental restructured their goals to try to become customers “favorite” airline to use. They use their active data warehousing to gain as much information about the company’s performance as well as the customers experience. They use this real-time warehousing program to interpret information that is provided and make changes that will better improve their customers experience and help Continental better suit their business in regards to their customers’ needs.…

    • 1485 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Data Warehousing Failures

    • 5385 Words
    • 22 Pages

    Eight studies of data warehousing failures are presented. They were written based on interviews with people who were associated with the projects. The extent of the failure varies with the organization, but in all cases, the project was at least a disappointment.…

    • 5385 Words
    • 22 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    CIS 510 Quiz ch11

    • 1858 Words
    • 13 Pages

    3. This allows individuals to own their creativity and innovation in a way similar to owning physical property.…

    • 1858 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Data Warehousing

    • 1687 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Data warehousing is the process of collecting data in raw form for analyzing trends. The benefits to data warehousing are improved end-user access, increased data consistency, various kinds of reports can be made from the data collected, gather the data in a common place from separate sources and additional documentation of data. Potential lower computing costs, increased productivity, end-users can query the database without using overhead of the operational systems and creates an infrastructure that can be used when changing systems, these are some more advantages to data warehousing…

    • 1687 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Tesco PLC is an international grocery and general merchandise retailer based in Cheshunt, United Kingdom. Tesco is the world's third biggest retailer after Wal-Mart and Carrefour (1), and the largest in the U.K. with a market share of over 30%, about twice the market share of its two closest competitors combined. Tesco was founded in 1919 as a brick and mortar business (2) and it would remain as such until 1996 when the company launched its online delivery service. However, it was not until 2000 that Tesco.com was formally established as the platform for online ordering. This case discusses and analyses how Tesco started online-grocery-retailing as a new distribution channel for its business, as well as the challenges, milestones, and rewards it encountered along the way.…

    • 1461 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    The secret to their superior data mining and collection is BudNET, an online system that connects wholesalers, retailers, and other business partners by allowing them to gather data on sales, products, customers, and competitors. In addition, the advanced technology allows AB to link to other data sources which include portable transaction computers carried by delivery personnel and bar code scan information. The company pioneered this new high-tech strategy and positive results are driving competitors to re-evaluate their own strategies.…

    • 1530 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Best Essays

    Data Warehousing and Olap

    • 2507 Words
    • 11 Pages

    Data warehousing and on-line analytical processing (OLAP) are essential elements of decision support, which has increasingly become a focus of the database industry. Many commercial products and services are now available, and all of the principal database management system vendors now have offerings in these areas. Decision support places some rather different requirements on database technology compared to traditional on-line transaction processing applications. This paper provides an overview of data warehousing and OLAP technologies, with an emphasis on their new requirements. We describe back end tools for extracting, cleaning and loading data into a data warehouse; multidimensional data models typical of OLAP; front end client tools for querying and data analysis; server extensions for efficient query processing; and tools for metadata management and for managing the warehouse.…

    • 2507 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    IM Macy s 2

    • 599 Words
    • 2 Pages

    To implement the kind of customer-centricity envisioned a customer data strategy was a prerequisite. So was needed to consolidate the various data repositories that had accumulated from predecessor companies, and for realizing the foundational importance of this work on a long-term macys.com need to turn to IBM to provide guidance and tools. To finish the virtually transformation macys.com worked to put in place the architectural elements needed for a 360 degree view of its customers to support a strategy of multichannel integration.…

    • 599 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Q1. What is the business benefits of taking the time and effort required to create and operate data warehouses such as those described in the case? Do you see any disadvantages? Is there any reason why all companies shouldn’t use data warehousing technology?…

    • 735 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays