Moving Forward with the On Demand Real-time Enterprise

278 Moving Forward with the On Demand Real-time Enterprise

6.4.1 The scenario

The following scenario description illustrates the real-time enterprise system at

work. On a particular day, an alert appears on the management dashboard. It

indicates the level of product returns, for a particular product, has exceeded the

defined threshold. In addition to the visible alert, an analytic application is

deployed. On determining the particular product that has caused the alert, the

application notifies the sales and shipping systems, and places a 24 hour hold on

all sales and pending shipments for the item. It also sends an email to the

procurement manager, as illustrated in Figure 6-10.

Figure 6-10 Analytical system information flow

The procurement manager reviews the information provided by the analytic

application, and determines that one particular brand of electric kettle has a high

rate of return due. The reason codes in the return data indicate that there could

be a potential defect in the kettle. The manager initiates a query to the quality

assurance system of the supplier of that kettle, who notices that a problem has

already been identified with that particular kettle. The manager contacts the

supplier and discovers that several retailers have been returning this particular

item, for the same reason.

The supplier initiates an action to investigate, and the results indicate that there

may in fact be a dangerous defect. The decision is made to recall those kettles.

The relationship between the retailer and the supplier systems is illustrated in

Figure 6-11.

Dashboard

Call Out

Web Service

Analytical System

Returns

KPI

Inventory

KPI

Sales

KPI

ODS

Data Warehousing Environment

Data Warehouse

Inventory

Sales

Purchasing

Shipping

Operational Systems

CRM

Analytical Processing

Chapter 6. The project test environment 279

Figure 6-11 Retailer supplier system interaction

The procurement manager changes the hold placed on the kettles that have not

yet been shipped, to a

stop shipping status. Next, notices are sent to customers

who ordered, or already purchased, a kettle. The procurement manager then

begins to assess the impact of the recall by using the analytical systems. During

this investigation it is noted that the CRM data is populated to the data

warehouse only once a week. That means the data they are using could be as

much as a week old, and so the problem could be more widespread than the

data currently available indicates. The manager determines that they need to

correlate the sales and CRM data, to get an accurate picture of the problem.

In addition to resolving this problem, management decides they must make

additional changes to the system to minimize the recurrence of this type of

problem. They want the system to be capable of avoiding such problems, rather

than just minimizing the impact once it is discovered. Since they already have a

fairly sophisticated system, the changes made are reasonably minimal. In this

case it is decided that the CRM data will update the ODS twice a day, instead of

once a week. Having data that is more current will enable potential problems to

be recognized more quickly and enable action to be taken much sooner. With

this new capability the retailer will be able to minimize loses, which impact

profitability, and maintain a high level of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The impact of the real-time enterprise

The above scenario represents a very simple example used to illustrate several

of the characteristics and advantages of the real-time enterprise. One key

characteristic of real-time enterprise is application integration. This is illustrated

in the example by the supplier and the retailer sharing information. It is this

sharing of information that enables the retailer and the supplier to quickly

determine that the item is defective and should be recalled.

Quality Assurance

Inventory System

Supplier System

Inventory

Sales

Purchasing

Shipping

Operational Systems

CRM

Analytic Applications

Analytical System