IBM > Case Studies > SHS Group drives smarter deals with 98 percent faster reporting on SAP HANA

SHS Group drives smarter deals with 98 percent faster reporting on SAP HANA

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Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
  • Europe
Country
  • United Kingdom
Product
  • SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse
  • SAP HANA
  • IBM System x3950 X5
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
  • IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS)
Tech Stack
  • SAP ERP
  • Intel Xeon E7-8870 processors
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise
Implementation Scale
  • Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
  • Productivity Improvements
  • Cost Savings
Technology Category
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries
  • Consumer Goods
Applicable Functions
  • Sales & Marketing
  • Business Operation
Use Cases
  • Predictive Quality Analytics
  • Supply Chain Visibility
  • Demand Planning & Forecasting
Services
  • System Integration
  • Data Science Services
About The Customer
SHS Group is a leading fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company that owns a range of world-recognized brands including WKD, Merrydown Cider, Bottlegreen, and Shloer. The group also markets, sells, and distributes products for other major grocery, beverage, and pharmaceutical suppliers. Headquartered in Belfast, Northern Ireland, SHS Group employs some 700 people across the UK and Ireland, and reports turnover of more than GBP400 million. The key to the group's continued success lies in maximizing sales for both its own brands and those of its suppliers, many of whom are global consumer goods powerhouses. To support its sales and marketing efforts, the group employs a 120-strong sales team to liaise with brand owners and sellers.
The Challenge
SHS Group, a leading FMCG company, wanted to empower its sales teams with timely, accurate information on all aspects of product performance, sales activity, and market trends. However, slow reporting was dulling business insight and threatened to put the group at risk of losing out on opportunities to boost sales and business volumes. As SHS Group grew through acquisition and expanded its brand portfolio, the group found that existing systems were struggling to cope with the corresponding increase in data volumes. The group's entire sales and marketing division, and its drinks division all run on an integrated SAP ERP instance. These areas generate an immense amount of data, and it was becoming more and more of a challenge to provide business users with timely access to the information they needed to perform analysis and reporting.
The Solution
To empower sales teams with fast, accurate reporting, SHS Group deployed SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse, powered by SAP HANA. Together with IBM Business Partner Centiq, the group deployed the IBM Systems solution for SAP HANA, based on an IBM System x3950 X5 Workload Optimized server featuring powerful Intel Xeon E7 processors. Centiq’s SAP HANA expertise and managed services support ensured a smooth implementation and enabled SHS to focus on value realization. The IBM Systems solution for SAP HANA is delivered on an IBM System x3950 X5 Workload Optimized server, featuring four 10-core Intel Xeon E7-8870 processors. These top-of-the-line processors deliver performance designed to handle data-demanding workloads with improved scalability and increased memory and I/O capacity. Advanced reliability and security features work to maintain data integrity, and maximize the availability of mission-critical applications.
Operational Impact
  • Reports can be generated 98 percent faster on average, taking just seconds, not minutes.
  • Faster, deeper insight into operations helps sales and marketing teams optimize product performance.
  • 100 times faster query performance and 70 percent faster data loading boosts staff productivity and drives rapid business insight.
  • Extreme data compression on the platform enabled SHS Group to reduce data volumes by a factor of three to four, freeing up several terabytes of storage space.
  • Smaller volumes of data mean less management effort for IT teams, improving productivity, and allow the business to grow in a more controlled way.
Quantitative Benefit
  • Reports can be generated 98 percent faster.
  • Query performance is 100 times quicker.
  • Data loading is 70 percent faster.
  • Data volumes reduced by a factor of three to four.
  • Expected to deliver full ROI within two to three years.

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