MFP Application TeachOut

Circuit City Store Support Center

MST APP SUPPORT/

CLIENT SERVER APP SUPPORT TEAM

Merchandise

Financial

Planning

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Plan Activity Types Pre-Season, and In-Season

Planning Activity and Plan Types

Plan Types / Versions

Original Plan (OP) Current Plan (CP) Working Plan (WP)

Executive Plan (EP) Director Plan (DP) Planner Plan (PP)

Last Year (LY) Last Last Year (LLY)

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Planning

Plans are created on worksheets which are:

Planner Planner PlannerPlanner

Director Director

• initially seeded with prior year data at the class-week level

• developed at various levels of the product hierarchy, by role

• reconciled between roles / mdse hierarchy levels

• rolled to a total company plan

Executive

* Reconciliation of plans is performed by the Director role.

MDSE Hierarchy

Top Down Planning ……………….

PlannerBuyer

PlannerBuyer

PlannerBuyer

Planner Buyer

DirectorMM

DirectorMM

ExecutiveGMM

Middle Out Planning *……….

Bottom Up Planning ..……….

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One to one relationship between MDSE and Product hierarchies

Product Hierarchy marries to MDSE hierarchy

Each Division has one GMM.

DeptClass

DeptClass

DeptClass

DeptClass

GroupSub-Cat

Group Sub-Cat

DivisionCategory

Each Group has one MM.

Each Department has one Buyer.

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Prod and Merch Hierarchies

Division

Group

Dept

GMM

DMM

Buyer

Merch hierarchy was added by CCS.

Prod hierarchy is deliveredwith the vanilla application.

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Calendar Hierarchy

MFP implements a Retail Calendar, presenting … last-last year, last year, current year and one future year.

Data is rolled from the week level into …month, quarter, season and/or year.

Data is split by either CCS or CCD, or rolled into Total Company.

Location Hierarchy

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By …

• Altering layout• Adding or removing hierarchy levels• Adding or removing hierarchy components, like departments• Creating reports• What-if scenarios• See example screens ….

Configurable Worksheets

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Administrative Utilities

• Auto Workbook Build• Data Load Validation• Hierarchy Maintenance (nada)• Mapping CY, LY, LLY Weeks• Workbook Security• User Administration!

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‘Commit’ saves to MFP’s ‘database’ on the application server, in a file system.

A recent Oracle document says the proprietary ACUMATE database doesn’t exist.

So don’t tell any body … but that is what stores and manages the data:

A utility that manages files holding multi-dimensional arrays.

Spreadsheets on steroids! Not an RDBMS.

‘Save’ saves to the user’s directory on the server.

Commit vs. Save

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Multi-Dimensional ArrayMulti-Dimensional Array

New Channel >>>>>>>>>CCD >>>>>>>>>CCS >>>>>>>>

Week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

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12

21

8 17 24 2 71 0

51 37 31 11 29 44 33 33

57 42 33 59

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10 51 9

11 84 74 22 34 11 66

55 31 14 29 75 41 48 2

37 61 55 88 6 0 72 69

100 >>

102 >>

103 >>

104 >>

105 >>

106 >>

CLASS

Sales Units Measure

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LOADED MEASURES

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Delivered Batch Utilities

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High Level FlowHigh Level Flow

EDW(nbaxa501) EDM

Legacy Systems

2. F

LAT

F

ILE

E

TL

UCEDM

`

MFP CLIENTSODS

(excel)

4. REPORTING ETL

1. L

OA

D

ET

L

MFP SERVER(nbaxa642)

3. EXPORT FILE ETL

1. LOAD ETL

Jan Feb Mar Apr Ma Jun

BPM/COGNOS REPORTS

`

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UCEDM User Controlled Enterprise Data Mart

Staging tables for MFP data loads

BPM Reporting tables for COGNOS and 3M reports on MFP data

Business User tables

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Step 1 - Prepare env and load hierarchies

Step 2 - Pull the data to UCEDM tables

Step 3 - Create flat files and load to MFP

Step 4 - Export plans from MFP (sub-stream 1a)

and send to excel (ODS)

MFP Batch Stream MFP Batch Stream stream 1

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Reporting Batch Stream stream 2

Load plan data exported from MFP,

and a fresh pull of EDW in-stock data,

to UCEDM reporting tables for access by COGNOS.

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ETL’s – Informatica Workflows

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Batch Schedule

MFP - Sunday (stream 1)

BPM Reporting - Sunday, Wed & Fri (sub-stream 1a

and stream 2)

Nightly – Stop server port and re-start (stream 3)

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Support

MFP Functional Team - support for users (333 user id’s)

Business Admin Superusers (4) configure application security manage application installs manage user id’s planning and analysis POC change agent

MST APP Support – IT support for MFP, BPM reports and UCEDM users

Help Desk - Identity confusion … is it RPAS, rPOS, MFP, MST, MPA, AS400, CS?

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Main Support Calls

Id lock-out: app allows only one log-in … firewalls disconnect inactive users …process id remains when client looses connection to server;

Data: historically the EDW data has been an issue for users;MFP focus-group has resolved/identified issues to

users’ satisfaction;

Hier Load: merch associate hierarchy is not a true hierarchy; actual buyer-mm-gmm relationships won’t load to MFP;

table is manually updated, and frequently changed;

MFP/BPM: BPM report processing, an EDW function, was lumped into MFP:

- same job stream - same support group (wrong group) - different customers with different needs

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Main Support Calls – cont.

batch: MFP and EDW batch stability:

job stream design, monitoring, table contention, fail/recover responsibility, data reloads subsequent to batch completion, data validation;

Stale wkbks: Commit of Friday’s workbook on Monday overwrites Sun’s data load!

Huge business risk. It doesn’t matter how good the data is if you overwrite it with junk.

UCEDM Users: requests for info concerning reporting table data

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End