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Retail

The Four-Hour Turnaround That Transformed Operations

A business professional sits in a modern office, looking down at a tablet with a focused, calm expression. Reflections on glass in the foreground add depth, while a softly blurred workspace with desks and screens appears in the background, suggesting a contemporary corporate environment.
donut pie chart showing 100%
Reduction in Outage
The ERP system of the giant retailer faced zero unplanned outages for over a year after the fix was implemented.
donut pie chart showing 94%
Improvement in ETL cycle time
The pivotal ETL job was reduced from over 5 hours to 10 minutes.
pie chart showing 4 hours
Rapid Diagnosis of Issues
Identified the root causes of ERP outages in 4 hours, compared to weeks by other vendors. 
donut pie chart showing 63%
Cost Savings
Significant cost cutting due to process and decision optimization, as well as zero reboots in a year.

The Backbone of Business Operations

A leading outdoor retailer that operates in over thirty (30) states relied heavily on its Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to handle important business operations. ERP, being the backbone of any business operations including supply chain, order management, and financials, plays a major role in the efficiency and success of the business. When the customer was struggling with instability and unplanned outages related to their ERP system, Buchanan was chosen to eliminate the instability as well as further optimize the system to allow for growth and scalability.

 

At a Glance

About the Client

Leading North American Outdoor Retailer

Solution

Performed a holistic system review, identified the root cause in 4 hours, and optimized ETL and ERP performance.

Results
  • 94% reduction in ETL cycle time
  • 100% eliminiation of unplanned outages
  • 4-hour root cause diagnosis
  • 63% cost savings
"Implementing the recommendations of Buchanan resulted
in the Smoothest Black Friday…ever."
IT DirectorLeading North American Outdoor Retailer
The Challenge

Daily Outages: A System in Crisis

Being a prominent name in the outdoor sports industry, a retailer cannot afford to have numerous outages on a daily basis. These unplanned outages not only disrupted their critical business operations but also posed a risk to transactions, shipments, and accurate financials. Despite the company previously engaging several different vendors to help address the root cause of the instability, other vendors were not able to address the root cause of the unplanned outages. Using Buchanan’s unique diagnostics methodology, the root cause of the instability was quickly identified, and remediation was implemented to resolve the issue. After implementing the recommended Buchanan solution, the unplanned outages were eliminated resulting in a massive increase in uptime.

The Solution

A Holistic Approach to Optimization

The customer then selected Buchanan to provide managed services to further help manage and optimize their Oracle ecosystem including the Oracle ERP system. Buchanan identified further optimizations including ETL inefficiencies which hindered key financial and analytical decision-making processes. One of the key ETL flows was optimized thereby reducing the job timings from five hours to a few minutes. This significantly improved the entire business intelligence job cycle.

Buchanan partnered with the leading retailer to handle what other vendors couldn’t: identifying the root cause of the Application instability and optimizing the ERP. Our proactive and specialized team conducted a holistic system review to quickly pinpoint the root causes of the frequent outages. 

Once the root cause was identified, the recommended solution was subsequently implemented, thereby eliminating the 5-6 unplanned outages and system restarts per day. The team at Buchanan uses what we call an ‘80-20 Rule’ where we spend 20% of our time on the discovery of the problem and 80% on the optimal and scalable solution. In addition to addressing the immediate need of the system instability, we also proactively analyzed long-running jobs including the ETL jobs. The ETL job was then reduced from over 5 hours to a few minutes, allowing the retailer to make quicker and efficient decisions. It also reduced the load on the ERP system, thereby providing additional headroom for growth.

"We had tried multiple vendors, but none were able to identify and resolve the issue. Within hours, Buchanan’s team identified the root cause and implemented a solution that stabilized our systems and operations."
IT ExecutiveLeading North American Outdoor Retailer
The Impact

Delivering Value, Cost Savings & Efficiency

The results of our holistic and proactive approach to ERP stability and Business Intelligence (BI) job optimization were immediate and catalytic:

  • 100% reduction in outages.
    The ERP system of the giant retailer faced zero unplanned outages for over a year after the fix was implemented.

  • 94% improvement in ETL cycle time.
     The pivotal ETL job was reduced from over 5 hours to 10 minutes.

  • Best time to resolution. 
    Identified the root causes of the ERP outages in a few hours, compared to many weeks and months by other vendors. 

A Foundation for Lasting Success

The transformative optimization of the ETL and ERP operations and the subsequent cost savings created a lasting impact on the fast-growing business. The real-time data access, attained by efficient ETL and maximum availability and uptime of the system, empowered operational efficiency, improved financial analytics, enhanced customer experience, and enabled faster decision-making for the company.

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Why Buchanan?

  • Full-stack provider with expertise in end-to-end infrastructure management, modern workplace services, and application performance management
  • Proven ITIL-based processes
  • Best-in-class remote monitoring and ticketing tools
  • Continuous process improvement methodology
  • Customer satisfaction monitoring 
  • Industry-recognized best practices
  • Flexible pricing and delivery models 
  • 100% satisfaction guarantee