The response to queries now is much faster. The data warehouse responds to any ad hoc query in minutes. The data warehouse allows Monfort salespeople to slice data to a market area level and to identify historical customer buying patterns, said Mary Jane Melcher, special projects manager in the IS department. The warehouse provides employees with timely information, which they can use as a decision-making tool. The DataTracker OLAP clients are installed across the company, in all departments on Windows-based PCs.
Users can access both current and historical data consistently and in a timely fashion.
Monfort envisions additional ways to make the warehouse even more useful. According to Melcher, the application will provide senior management with a high level of financial analysis that looks at actual sales and open orders to compare against the forecast. In addition, it will provide product management the ability to identify what product needs to be manufactured to meet the demands of the open order forecast. For the first year and a half, I was banging my head against the wall to get this kind of information. Now I have it.