Boulanger Halves Storage Space Requirements and Improves Access to Business Intelligence Data
 
 

Boulanger Halves Storage Space Requirements and Improves Access to Business Intelligence Data

  • Oracle Customer:  Boulanger
    Location:  Lesquin, France
    Industry:  Retail
    Employees:  8,000
    Annual Revenue:  $1 to $5 Billion

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Boulanger, with 60 years of experience, ranks number two in the French marketplace for multimedia products and retail household appliances. It has 130 stores in France, and offers 20,000 products on its e-commerce Website. A subsidiary of the family-owned group Mulliez, Boulanger launched two proprietary brands eight years ago: Essentiel b—which provides multimedia products and household appliances focused on sustainable development—and Listo, offering low-end, household appliances.

To manage its marketing campaigns, the Boulanger marketing department wanted an automated solution to support its growing business intelligence (BI) database that contains daily reporting data and sales analyses generated by the store’s network. To optimize its BI environment’s performance, Boulanger migrated its in-house, BI application to Oracle Exadata Database Machine. This migration cut storage space in half, from 1 terabyte to 500 gigabytes, thus reducing long-term storage costs. Oracle Exadata also accelerated daily reporting and provided the entire organization with insight into sales data.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Boulanger

  • “Our marketing department needed to automate its campaigns and gain better access to business intelligence data. We met these needs with Oracle Exadata Database Machine, while also reducing storage requirements by 50% and increasing our competitive edge in the retail market for multimedia products and household appliances.” – Eric Vaneenoo, Technical Director, Boulanger

  • Optimize access to the in-house BI database, so the marketing department can automate its campaigns and analyze results in real time to react on the fly
  • Improve corporate information sharing—specifically for sharing Boulanger stores’ sales results—among all employees
  • Reduce database backup time to remain within an overnight time frame

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Migrated the former in-house BI application, developed on Oracle Database 11g and operating on an IBM server, to Oracle Exadata Database Machine with high-performance SAS drives to optimize access to BI data
  • Developed an in-house application for marketing campaign management in the new Oracle Exadata Database Machine environment to automate campaigns
  • Cut storage space in half, from 1 terabyte to 500 gigabytes, to eliminate additional drives, thus reducing long-term storage costs
  • Halved time spent reporting daily figures, which include comparisons with the previous day’s sales, by store or consolidated by product (for example, large household appliances); by product category (for example, television sets); by region; or by stores
  • Made reporting available, beginning at 7:00 a.m. each day, to store managers on their mobile phones and to all employees and management accountants via the intranet
  • Halved the time required to provide employees with answers to analytic sales queries, thus improving information dissemination and maintaining the organization’s results-based corporate culture
  • Reduced by 75% the time required to save all data in Oracle Exadata Database Machine, thus optimizing the IT department’s backup plans
  • Lessened time the two database administrators spent on maintenance and operation, thanks to the intelligent automation integrated into the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, especially for SQL query optimization

Why Oracle

Following a call for tenders and after comparing Oracle against reputable competitors, Boulanger selected Oracle Exadata Database Machine, due to the ease of migration with its existing Oracle Database 11g. By choosing Oracle, the group maintained all existing BI SQL queries, optimized for the environment. Furthermore, Oracle Exadata Database Machine saved the most storage space.

Implementation Process

Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services assisted Boulanger in installing the Oracle Exadata Database Machine and in migrating the business intelligence environment to Oracle Exadata. Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services also transferred skills to Boulanger’s database administrators. Boulanger completed the migration process in less than 12 hours, and the DBAs are now independent thanks to a top quality transfer.

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