Business Intelligence Essay

As Business Intelligence (BI) becomes a captious component of daily operations, real time info w atomic number 18houses (DW) that pass on end users with rapid updates and alerts generated from transactional systems are increasingly being deployed. Real-time discipline warehovictimization and BI, alivenessing its aggressive Go Forward care scheme, have helped Continental Airlines alter its industry status from lash to first and then from first to favorite. Continental Airlines is a leader in real-time BI. In 2004, Continental win the Data Warehousing Institutes Best Practices and Leadership Award.Big ProblemsContinental Airlines was founded in 1934, with a single-engine Lockheed aircraft in the southwest U.S. As of 2006, Continental (Houston) is the fifth largest airway in the United States and the seventh largest in the world. Continental has the broadest global route profit of any U.S. airline, with more than than 2,300 daily departures to more than 227 destinatio ns.Back in 1994, Continental was in deep financial trouble. It had fi take for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection twice and was heading for its third, and in all likelihood final, bankruptcy. Ticket sales were hurting because accomplishment on factors that are important to customers was dismal, including a low percentage of on-time departures, frequent baggage arrival problems, and too some an(prenominal) customers sour away due to overbooking.SolutionThe revitalization of Continental began in 1994, when Gordon Bethune became CEO and initiated the Go Forward plan, which consisted of four interrelated move to be implemented simultaneously. Bethune targeted the need to change customer-valued performance measures by better arrangement customer needs as wellspring as customer perceptions of the value of function that were and could be offered. Financial management practices were in addition targeted for a signifi displacet overhaul. As former(a) as 1998, the airline had sepa rate infobases for market and operations, all hosted and managed by outside vendors. bear upon queries and instigating marketing programs to its high-value customers were time-consuming and ineffective. In addition, nurture that the workforce needed to make contiguous stopping points was simply not available. In 1999, Continental chose to integrate its marketing, IT, revenue, and operational information sources into a single, in-house, enterprise data store (EDW). The data warehouse provided a variety of early, major benefits.As soon as Continental returned to profitability and ranked first in the airline industry in many performance metrics, Bethune and his management group elevated the bar by escalating the vision. Instead of exclusively performing best, they wanted Continental to be their customers favourite airline. The Go Forward plan established more actionable shipway to move from first to favourite among customers. applied science became increasingly critical f or put uping these refreshed initiatives. In the early days, having access to historical, co-ordinated tuition was sufficient. This produced substantial strategic value. only it became increasingly imperative for the data warehouse to provide real-time, actionable information to support enterprise-wise tactical termination making and disdain processes.Luckily, the warehouse team had expected and staged for the real-time shift. From the very beginning, the team had created an computer architecture to handle real-time data feeds into the warehouse, extracts of data from legacy systems into the warehouse, and tactical queries to the warehouse that requisite almost immediate response times. In 2001, real-time data became available from the warehouse, and the sum up stored grew rapidly. Continental moves real-time data (ranging from to-the-minute to hourly) closely customers, reservations, check-ins, operations, and flights from its main operational systems to the warehouse. C ontinentals real-time applications include the following tax income management and accounting Customer kinship management (CRM) Crew operations and paysheet Security and fraud Flight operationsBenefitsIn the first year alone, afterwards the data warehouse project was deployed, Continental identified and eliminated over $7 trillion in fraud and reduced be by $41 meg. With a $30 million investment in hardware and software over six years, Continental has reached over $500 million in increased revenues and cost savings in marketing, fraud detection, demand forecasting and tracking, and meliorate data centre management. The single, integrated, trusted put one over of the business (i.e. the single version of the truth) has led to better, faster decision making.Continental is without delay identified as a leader in real-time BI, based on its scalable and extensible architecture, practical decisions in what data are captured in real-time, self-colored relationships with end user s, a small and exceedingly competent data warehouse staff, fair weighing of strategic and tactical decision support requirements, understanding of the synergies between decision support and operations, and changed business processes that use real-time data.Questions1.Describe the benefits of implementing the Continental Go Forward strategy.2.Explain wherefore it is important for an airline to use a real-time data warehouse.3.Examine the following seek system output screen. Describe how it can assist the user in identifying problems and opportunities.Extracted from http//www.teradata.com/t/page/139245/4.Identify the major differences between the handed-down data warehouse and a real-time data warehouse, as was implemented at Continental.5.What strategic advantage can Continental derive from the real-time system as opposed to a traditional information system?Additional information on Continental Airlines extracted from http//www.teradata.com/t/page/139245/Continental scores with T eradata and HyperionContinental Airlines, the worlds sixth largest airline, was recently named the most prize global airline by batch magazine. But Continental wasnt of all time so highly acclaimed. In 1994, it ranked 10th out of 10 airlines assessed by U.S. Department of Transportation metrics. The airline knew dwarfish about its important customers, set fares and schedules using conventional industry assumptions, conducted contract negotiations blindly and fought fraud only after the slander was done. Continentals turn rough dramatically demonstrates how a data warehouse implementation and strategic use of BIin this case, Teradata and Hyperion, respectivelycan change a company to attain competitive advantage. In fact, Continentals pull in it Gartners 2005 BI Excellence Award.Continental developed an enterprise data theoretical account that simplifies the joining of different subject areas to provide a single view of information for the BI environment. The model can suppor t any query a user asks. Twenty-seven source systems feed the data warehouse, including schedules, inventory, reservations, OnePass (Continentals frequent flyer program) and employee/ conclave payroll. More than 1,100 people use Continentals Teradata/Hyperion-based system. The single, integrated, trusted view of the business has produced benefits ranging from better, faster decision-making to more than $500 million in cost savings, as well as incremental revenue from many initiatives that required BI information. The CRM and marketing team at Continental offers a button-down estimate of $150 million in revenue gains and $25 million in cost savings and fraud prevention.