Enhanced Infrastructure Helps H2O Retailing Make Strategic Use of Information Resources - New system provides the information truly desired by management and staff, for use in strategic planning and marketing -

NTT DATA Corporation (Head office: Koto-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Toru Yamashita) and Oracle Corporation Japan (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Takao Endo) have completed a newly redesigned information delivery platform for H₂O Retailing Corporation (Head office: Kita-ku, Osaka; President and Representative Director: Jun Wakabayashi), supporting that company's growth strategy, and this month have fully deployed the system for operations of the Hankyu Hanshin Department Stores. As core packages for the system, H₂O Retailing has adopted Oracle Japan's business intelligence products Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus (Oracle BIEE Plus), Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, and Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Background

To achieve further growth in a rapidly changing market environment, H₂O Retailing, the holding company of retailer Hankyu Hanshin Department Stores, Inc., needed to make its strategic planning and marketing more competitive, in a united effort by management and employees. To this end, the company decided to introduce a new information delivery platform system. Its aim was to bring together all kinds of data scattered throughout the group concerning sales, products, customers, count data and various other types of information, and to utilize this data aggressively in business processes.
The company had already been gathering and making use of accurate information. The problem was that much of the data was in fixed formats such as paper forms or Acrobat PDF files; moreover, data was made available to users by separate systems for sales, products, and customer information. People in the company were unable to use this vast information efficiently, process it quickly, and obtain the necessary information in timely fashion.
The decision to introduce a new information delivery platform system was aimed at solving these problems. Chosen as IT partner for the development project was NTT DATA, which had proposed a system applicable both to the company's management issues and to business process issues. The system uses an original modeling methodology to organize and integrate from a medium-term perspective the data scattered throughout the company, and offers a high degree of usability. As the core package for the system, the company chose Oracle BIEE Plus. This package makes use of Oracle Business Intelligence Express Service, a consulting service provided by Oracle Japan on information utilization. Oracle BIEE Plus is open and highly flexible, has a large number of enterprise-scale users, and also meets the needs of those users who want to carry out their own complex analysis as they see fit.

Features of the Information Delivery Platform System

1. Using sales data derived from POS (Point Of Sales) terminals, the system integrates various data such as purchasing, product, and customer information. Both management and employees in each of the company divisions can reference unified data, enabling timely analysis of daily sales as well as profits, products, customers, and various other kinds of information. From just a few seconds up to thirty seconds, the new system performs complex data analysis, such as that using cross tables, which took all day and night to process with the old system. As a result, the amount of data that can be analyzed has been increased five-fold, adding sales and customer information to the product information analyzed up to now.
2. Besides handling the data that has become established as company-wide indicators, the system comes with functions allowing employees in each of the company divisions to extract the desired information quickly and freely. By making possible information access and analysis from new standpoints or using freely defined data profiles, the system provides the means for making fresh discoveries and obtaining new business hints.
3. NTT DATA, using an original data structure modeling methodology, arranged the scattered data systematically and performed database structuring. Besides enabling fast and flexible development to meet future changes, the system provides a data analysis environment with a high degree of freedom.

Company Roles

• NTT DATA
  Based on analyses of the process and system issues faced by H₂O Retailing, NTT DATA designed and developed a highly flexible and extensible system. In the analysis phase, NTT DATA inventoried dozens of forms, designed the flow of screens and processes for the new system from the standpoint of the users' workflow and type of analysis performed, and also provided analytical patterns likely in the future, carrying out the database structuring on this basis.
• Oracle Japan
  The role of Oracle Japan is provision of Oracle Business Intelligence Express Service, a consulting service on information utilization.

Looking Ahead

In the future, H₂O Retailing plans to increase the aggregation of information in the system, while further expanding the functionality such as for analyzing various count data and for customer analysis to increase the market share of the group. NTT DATA, with the aim of more efficient and effective business intelligence provision, is undertaking new initiatives including integrated data analysis and use across companies and industries, and enhanced real-time data analysis. Together with Oracle Japan, we will continue to support H₂O Retailing as a partner in its efforts to achieve further growth in the rapidly changing department store industry.