Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2Customer Solution Case Study

New Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Solution provides key agricultural organization users with access to critical business information.

OverviewCountry or Region: New Zealand

Industry: Agriculture – Meat procurement, processing and marketing.

Customer ProfileSilver Fern Farms is New Zealand’s leading procurer, processor and marketer of sheep, lamb, beef and venison.

Business SituationSilver Fern Farms is New Zealand’s leading procurer, processor and marketer of sheep, lamb, beef and venison.

SolutionIn order to provide enterprise level reporting, a key factor in the new business strategy of ‘Plate to Pasture’, Silver Fern Farms began the process of creating a Data Warehouse and comprehensive Business Intelligence solution.

Benefits Consolidated reporting Visible business insights Multi-level user access Meaningful, accurate, automated and

timely reports. Saving valuable time and resources Cohesive data integration Reduced Total cost of Ownership

“Business Intelligence is all about providing good data to good people to make good decisions – and we are thrilled to have achieved this!”

Peter Jenks, Business Intelligence Architect, Silver Fern Farms.

With multiple production systems across many lines of business, generating consolidated reporting to reflect the organization as a whole was very difficult for Silver Fern Farms. A change in the company philosophy combined with a new business strategy – ‘Plate to Pasture’ – meant the company required a state-of-the-art Business Intelligence platform. To support the new business strategy, Sliver Fern Farms leveraged Microsoft SQL Server to build a Data Warehouse solution that consolidates information across the enterprise as a whole.

SituationSilver Fern Farms is New Zealand’s leading procurer, processor and marketer of sheep, lamb, beef and venison. It is a co-operative that represents more than 20,000 sheep, cattle and deer farmers throughout New Zealand.

With a history in New Zealand stretching as far back as 1948, the company was originally called Primary Producers Co-operative Society and traded under this name until 2008. They rebranded due to a change in company strategy from a production-based approach to one of being market-focused.

This new strategy was a fundamental philosophy change for Silver Fern Farms and is referred to as the ‘Plate to Pasture’ approach. It means the company now extensively researches the target market and supplies products that directly reflect customer demand.

Individual systems designed at the transactional level focused on separate areas of the business. However, these failed to provide the big picture analysis Silver Fern Farms needed for strategic decision making. Multiple legacy systems had been developed in-house over an extended period to focus on individual lines of business – while these worked well in isolation, they could not communicate directly with each other.

Each area of the business had the ability to generate multiple reports to reflect business activity for that specific area of the enterprise. A variety of manpower-intensive manual processes were used to provide consolidated reporting to the management

team. Unfortunately these processes were laborious, inefficient and absorbed hours of staff resources every month.

SolutionIn order to provide enterprise level reporting, a key factor in the new business strategy of ‘Plate to Pasture’, Silver Fern Farms began the process of creating a Data Warehouse and comprehensive Business Intelligence (BI) solution. The organization worked in conjunction with Montage Business Intelligence, a Microsoft partner with a gold competency in BI. Having worked with Silver Fern Farms for a number of years, Montage had developed a deep understanding of the company, so it was a logical choice to utilize their expertise to develop the new Data Warehouse solution for the enterprise.

“The most important thing about starting a project like this is to have complete buy-in from both sides. Montage understood our business and worked in partnership with us to iron out all the tricky details before we began,” says Peter Jenks, Business Intelligence Architect at Silver Fern Farms.

The purpose of the Data Warehouse is to gain insights and develop strategies based on a complete enterprise picture of the business, as opposed to attempting to deduce business decisions from low level detail. For Silver Fern Farms there were three main components to the solution. Initially the key data requirements were identified. Next, a plan to integrate and transform the data was defined, while finally a process to deliver the data in the most efficient and straightforward manner was constructed.

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Using Microsoft technology, in particular SQL 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010, as the Data Warehouse platform, provided Silver Fern Farms with extensive integration capability and a world-class presentation platform.

There are three layers in the SQL Server 2008 R2 Data Warehouse stack – staging, dimensional and reporting/analytical layers. The third layer is made up of two sections: a series of online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes built using SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS); and a denormalized relational database targeted at the end users.

At Silver Fern Farms, a large amount of data capture is performed remotely at processing plants using SQL Server. These remote sites regularly feed data to a centralized processing point which is then populated through the Data Warehouse using SQL integration services.

Key financial data is extracted from Microsoft Dynamics NAV in a highly incremental manner to provide ‘almost real time’ updates through the Data Warehouse to business users.

“Collaborating data from multiple disparate sources is always a challenge, and we had to be certain that the final result was totally accurate and reliable. The only way to do that is to test it all, section by section. It took a long time, but the end result was worth the effort,” says Peter.

The Data Warehouse was implemented using a phased approach which allowed controlled release with minimal disruption to the business.

“A successful BI program generally evolves from aligning people, processes and technology. Silver Fern Farms’ approach was spot on, they are going at the right pace rather than leading with technology and hoping the people catch up,” says Tony Millar, CEO of Montage Business Intelligence.

BenefitsSilver Fern Farms was able to realize the benefits of their new consolidated data and Data Warehouse solution almost instantly. Benefits include the following:• Consolidated reporting• Visible business insights• Multi-level user access• Meaningful, accurate, automated and

timely reports• Saving valuable time and resources• Cohesive data integration • Reduced Total Cost of Ownership • Digital dashboards for monitoring KPI’s

The team at Silver Fern Farms can now gain insights from consolidated data automatically without manual intervention. Staff can select specific lines of business or view information from across the entire group.

“The ability to view reports that consolidate data from across the business has changed the way we work," says Stewart Cowan, Business Intelligence Manager for Silver Fern Farms.

There has been massive reduction in manual processes to generate data and reports.

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“We no longer have to go through the painful process of manually pulling data together every month. The information is accurate, reliable and available whenever we need it, saving us hours every month,” says Stewart.

The new Data Warehouse and Microsoft BI tools allow for easy identification of historical trends and provide valuable insights for strategic decision making.

“By gaining a greater insight into our customers’ historical and future needs, we can align with our ‘Plate to Pasture' strategy and supply the products that we know our customers want,” says Stewart. The ability to offer self-service BI means staff throughout the business can leverage user friendly reporting tools and extract the information they need on their own terms. Incorporating SharePoint 2010 with Microsoft Office 2010 has also provided the company with a range of options to present data to key stakeholders in the most effective manner using technology, like Office 2010, that users were already comfortable with.

Microsoft SharePoint allows the company to create multiple sites for teams to collaborate and access information. By connecting to their team website (known internally as “Paddocks”), the senior executive team at Silver Fern Farms can monitor company information via the digital dashboard. From their Paddock, executives can click on a figure and connect all the way through to the general ledger transactions if desired.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 delivers higher scalability for mission-critical environments, more efficient IT, and expanded reporting and analytics through self-service business intelligence.

For more information about Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, go to: www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2-editions.aspx

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft go to: www.microsoft.com

For more information about Silver Fern Farms products and services, call 3 477 3980 or visit the website at: http://silverfernfarms.co.nz/Our- Company/New-Zealand-Offices.asp

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.