Pentaho and microstrategy audit for Palmers Textil
Project overview
Palmers Textil AG is one of the largest fashion brands in Austria. It was founded back in 1914 and evolved over time. In the 2000s and 2010s, Palmers started the global digitalization campaign. We joined it as experts in digital transformation, business analysis, and development. Particularly, DICEUS carefully analyzed internal ETL processes, including an audit of Pentaho and MicroStrategy. We identified issues and suggested solutions.
Client information
Palmers Textil AG is an international clothing brand that originated in Austria. Ludwig Palmers started it as a laundry back in 1914. In 2000, the company opened its first online shop. Since 2015, Palmers is owned by P Tex Holding GmbH. Today, the brand sells underwear, clothes, and accessories in more than 300 stores in 17 countries.
Business challenge
Due to outdated digital solutions, our client faced problems with business processes. Furthermore, in-house IT experts didn’t work closely with key users from other departments, so they had unaligned goals. The company wanted to analyze ETL processes and report systems to optimize operations, save costs, fix issues. Our team reviewed core areas, divided issues into three categories by urgency, and proposed improvements.
Technical challenges
Two target areas of the audit were Pentaho and MicroStrategy. We had to check the related processes and data-related activities. As long as MicroStrategy is the visualization tool for reports, we also worked with these documents. Many environment elements were undocumented and difficult to analyze. At all, we spotted minor, middle, and major issues related to ETL, data processing, and reporting.
Audit areas
Pentaho
According to the audit, the company has four core servers: SAP, POS, FBC, and CRM. They exchange data with the data warehouse or DWH. These operations rely on Pentaho – the software solution that provides data integration, OLAP, and ETL. In total, we’ve identified 4 issues, including 2 major ones: missing key info in the DWH and not optimized OLAP schemas.
Suggested improvements:
- Gather, update, and make new documents related to DWH and ETL processes
- Optimize ETL processes, remove irrelevant data transfers
- Prepare and test transformations in SAP and POS servers
- Redesign the main DWH schema according to the department’s goals
MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy is a company behind graphical and visualization solutions for reports. Working on this project, we tested how the software works for Palmers. We checked several reports, overall performance, user experience for sales, marketing, inventory, and other reports. The total number of issues was 6, including 2 major ones. The main problem was that many reports didn’t meet the goals of users and their departments. Also, results were unverified, so it was barely possible to rely on them.
Suggested improvements:
- Define key users in each department related to the reporting processes
- Define the most essential reports for each department
- Identify goals, set priorities based on general and fashion-retail KPIs
- Prepare necessary supporting documents, manuals, and data glossary
- Test the environment, run data verification procedures
- Train end-users after the system upgrade
- Use SAP reports, if possible, instead of MicroStrategy
Audit results
In two target areas, we identified 10 problems that affected the client’s performance and business results. Generally, this audit showed a lack of critical internal info and process optimization. Based on our suggestions, the company could set new clear processes to improve ETL, data analysis, reporting, and user experience.
Let’s discuss how we can help with your project
Value to our client
Our tech stack
Java
MicroStrategy
Pentaho
SAP
PL/SQL
