Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
Customer Solution Case Study
Consumer Goods Company Responds to
Market Faster with Consolidated Data
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Manufacturing - Consumer
goods
Customer Profile
Through its subsidiaries, UST Inc. is a
leading manufacturer and marketer of
smokeless tobacco and premium wine
products. Based in Connecticut, the
company has annual revenue of nearly
U.S.$2 billion.
Business Situation
UST Inc. wanted to improve its ability to
analyze sales and marketing data. Because
of manual processes and disparate data
sources, reports could take weeks to
complete.
Solution
For faster and more advanced data
analysis, UST Inc. implemented a
consolidated data warehouse solution from
G4 Analytics built on Microsoft® SQL
Server™ database software.
Benefits
 Increased productivity and business
efficiency
 83 percent return on investment
 A transformed operating environment
 More effective business strategies
“We now have a foundation in place to build state-ofthe-art systems that will allow our sales executives not
just to plan, but also to execute better business
strategies.”
Anthony J. DeCredico, Director of Project Development and Implementation, UST Inc.
UST Inc., a Connecticut-based manufacturer and marketer of
consumer goods, had to analyze sales and marketing data from
multiple sources. To enable a faster, more targeted response to
changes in the marketplace, the company implemented a
consolidated data warehouse solution from G4 Analytics. UST Inc.
uses the solution, which is built on Microsoft® SQL Server™
database software, to integrate multiple data sources and develop
demand-driven selling strategies. Complex reports that took weeks
to process are now completed in hours, and the improved efficiency
has helped the company realize an 83 percent return on
investment. UST Inc. continues to develop both the solution and its
competitive advantage by integrating more data sources and
developing increasingly focused selling programs.
“Some of the biggest
benefits are evident in
our efficiency gains. For
example, by automating
weekly reports … we are
getting an efficiency
gain of six hours per
week for one full-time
employee.”
Anthony J. DeCredico, Director of Project
Development and Implementation, UST Inc.
Situation
UST Inc., with headquarters in Greenwich,
Connecticut, manufactures and markets
smokeless tobacco products and premium
wines through it subsidiaries. Founded more
than 175 years ago, the company takes pride
in its long history and tradition in the
consumer goods industry. UST Inc. is equally
committed to the modern marketplace,
where staying competitive depends on the
ability to respond quickly to adult consumer
demands. However, the company’s business
intelligence technology did not provide
adequate support to facilitate timely and
strategic decision making at the retail level.
UST Inc. stored its shipment data in a data
mart based on Microsoft® SQL Server™
database software running on the Windows
Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition operating
system. The company exported that data to
EssBase analytics software from Hyperion
Solutions Corporation for multidimensional
analysis. Another product, Wired for OLAP,
served as the user interface. This solution
limited UST Inc.’s ability to perform advanced
analytics because it did not take advantage
of the analysis services tools available in SQL
Server and because it was limited to a single
data source.
The company had multiple, third-party data
sources that it could potentially tap for
analysis. For example, one source captured
retail sales data, and another provided
information about store-level activity.
However, integrating those data sources was
difficult because the current technology could
not scale sufficiently to process the hundreds
of millions of data rows they generated. Yet to
develop effective selling strategies, the
company needed details such as retailer
volume, pricing, distribution metrics, and
comparisons to market performance.
Although data was available for more than
300,000 retail outlets and 1,500 distributors,
disparate sources and time-consuming,
manual data-handling processes limited UST
Inc.’s analysis mostly to data concerning
outbound shipments. The difficulty in using
the other data sources was reflected in usage
statistics: Several hundred employees used
the internal data mart, but only a few used
the third-party data suppliers. “It was a
tremendous challenge to try and consolidate
the data. It took a lot of manual effort just to
put it into a spreadsheet or produce a
management report,” says Anthony J.
DeCredico, Director of Project Development
and Implementation at UST Inc.
Worse yet, often by the time the information
was gathered into a report, it became
obsolete. In fact, it could take the company
several weeks to produce a single critical
sales report. That delay hindered the
company’s ability to adapt quickly to the
marketplace. “If you’re trying to do detailed
analysis to understand store behavior better
but it takes weeks to get results, your ability
to react and tailor a selling program is going
to be limited,” explains Rick Hall, President
and Chief Executive Officer of G4 Analytics.
UST Inc. sought to become more sensitive to
the marketplace and develop business
strategies based on demand. If the company
wanted to take full advantage of available
information, it needed a unified database
solution with faster, more sophisticated
analytic capabilities.
Solution
The IT team at UST Inc. was one of the first
groups to identify the need for an updated
business intelligence platform. “A partnership
was forged between the departments
involved, namely the IT, Strategic Information
Management, Sales, and Trade Development
teams, who are the key consumers of IT
services,” says DeCredico. The search for a
solution was inspired by both business and
technical priorities. All the participants
wanted tools that would produce better
results. In particular, the IT team wanted a
solution that would not only integrate well
with existing technology, but also provide a
base for future growth.
The company was already using Microsoft
SQL Server, and the IT team wanted the
database software as the foundation for a
new solution. “One of our main IT principles is
that we try to adhere to industry-standard
technologies,” says DeCredico. “We try not to
mix technologies. When we can reuse
something we do, we can control costs
because we already have the tools along with
the in-house expertise.”
The next step was to find a partner that could
help UST Inc. integrate its data sources and
provide the appropriate industry analytics
and reports. The company’s IT team realized
that developing the solution on its own could
take up to three years; it was clear that the
company needed a system in place more
quickly than that. Thus, in late 2001, UST Inc.
contacted G4 Analytics, a Microsoft Certified
Partner that specializes in business
intelligence and data warehousing in the
consumer goods industry.
G4 Analytics develops solutions that consist
of an underlying database as well as a
“factory” or template that generates the data
warehouse structure. The factory also
includes industry-specific analytics that
support data mining and forecasting, while
reporting and analysis tools are delivered
through an intuitive user interface. Although
the solution would be customized for UST
Inc., DeCredico and his team knew that the
prebuilt features would accelerate
implementation.
The IT team had overcome the first hurdle by
finding a solution that could be implemented
quickly. The next step was to complete a
proof of concept to convince other
management groups at UST Inc. that the new
system would be worth the investment. The
proof of concept, which was completed by
early spring of 2002, effectively
demonstrated that a consolidated data
warehouse (CDW) could save the company
time and money. With that initial success
behind them, G4 Analytics and the UST Inc.
IT team integrated the first major data
sources into the data warehouse within six
months.
The newly consolidated data sources
included retail sales data and store call
information supplied by external data
providers, as well as shipment information
gathered from within UST Inc. The entire
project was complete by December 2002.
The CDW system now handles data gathered
by 1,500 distributors from more than
300,000 stores and is updated on a weekly
basis. In contrast, the old methods delivered
data every four weeks. Hall says that the
CDW system depends on SQL Server
Integration Services, which automates the
routine that extracts, transforms, and loads
the disparate data. “This solution would not
be possible without the scalability and
analytic ability of SQL Server Integration
Services and SQL Server Analysis Services,”
explains Hall.
“UST Inc. has used its CDW solution to refine
its selling strategy at the store level,” Hall
continues. “The company combines data
from disparate sources to look at which
products are shipping, which products are
selling, and how they are being sold. UST Inc.
uses the information to define selling
programs within a very structured process.”
In other words, the company identifies which
stores have the highest demand, and then
develops strategies that target those stores.
The company continues to integrate new data
sources into its solution and will update its
“UST Inc. uses its
consolidated data
warehouse to devise
targeted selling
programs based on
extremely detailed
analysis. The company
takes consumerdemand data and
integrates that data into
its selling programs.”
Rick Hall, President and Chief Executive
Officer, G4 Analytics
database software with the latest versions of
SQL Server. Now that UST Inc. has a solid
foundation in place for its data warehouse,
plans are underway to develop a sales force
automation system that will be developed
with the Microsoft .NET Framework. This
project will unfold over the next year; shorterterm initiatives include integrating the G4
solution with a sales-planning and operationplanning system that will enable
sophisticated demand planning and inventory
analysis.
Benefits
By automating the creation and distribution
of management reports, UST Inc. has
increased efficiency and reduced costs.
Detailed data is now available at all levels of
the organization and is used to facilitate
business decisions. Teams can take
advantage of advanced analytics to develop
business strategies based on an increasingly
comprehensive array of business data.
Increased Productivity and Business
Efficiency
In addition to gaining better insight into store
activity, UST Inc. has increased productivity.
“Some of the biggest benefits are evident in
our efficiency gains. For example, by automating weekly reports for our Strategic
Information Management group, we are getting an efficiency gain of six hours per week
for one full-time employee,” says DeCredico.
Employees also gain eight hours per month
through automation of the monthly reports.
Productivity gains are due to more than just
integrated data sources. The company has
also increased efficiency by integrating the
CDW system with programs in the Microsoft
Office system like the Microsoft Office
PowerPoint® 2003 presentation graphics
program. For example, a customer business
review presentation that formerly took
several weeks to produce is now generated in
minutes. “It would require several iterations
to gather data and put it together in a spreadsheet,” says DeCredico. “Now we
automatically generate PowerPoint
presentations with the data warehouse as the
feed.”
To create that tool, DeCredico’s team used
Visual Basic® Scripting Edition and Microsoft
Office Excel® 2003 spreadsheet software to
develop a spreadsheet into which users can
enter requests such as time periods and
stores. Information is pulled by the
spreadsheet from the data warehouse to
populate the slides. “The user literally clicks
the button, and the application produces a
75- to 80-page PowerPoint presentation,”
says DeCredico.
83 Percent Return on Investment
The G4 solution reduces costs because
employees can create reports more quickly
and because the IT environment is more
stream-lined. The combined savings have
resulted in an 83 percent return on
investment.
UST Inc. strives for a standardized and
integrated IT environment and seeks to
reduce costs incurred by maintaining thirdparty systems. The consolidated data
warehouse based on SQL Server helps the
company meet those goals by providing an
integrated data storage and analysis solution.
The analytics and data are all managed inhouse on a single platform with Microsoft
technology.
The company has also reduced the amount of
fees paid to third-party data suppliers. The
third-party suppliers charged for data
requests and basic analysis services, but UST
Inc. now meets those needs internally. The
company performs its own analysis, and has
reduced data requests because data is fed
directly from the third-party supplier to the G4
system.
A Transformed Operating Environment
UST Inc. plans to integrate more applications
into its CDW system, including Microsoft
Office SharePoint® Server 2007. “We have
manufacturing applications that integrate
with our enterprise resource planning system,
and that information will ultimately reside in
some kind of data warehouse,” explains
DeCredico, who plans to use the business
intelligence platform for capturing
information like metrics for performance,
manufacturing productivity, and uptime.
The sales force automation project is another
effort made possible by SQL Server
technology. “We were unable to consider
working on this project before we
implemented a solid data foundation. By
using SQL Server Analysis Services, we can
now build our sales execution systems
correctly without worrying about disparate
data,” DeCredico says. The company has
dedicated 30 IT professionals to the project
and expects to have it completed within a
year.
More Effective Business Strategies
The G4 solution helps the company make
better, timelier business decisions. “We can
do almost anything with our data. We can
look at volume, distribution, analytics, or the
effectiveness of trade programs,” says
DeCredico. The detailed, comprehensive
insight gives UST Inc. the knowledge and
flexibility it needs to develop strategies for
increasing sales volume in individual stores
or across retail channels.
Hall explains that using consumer-demand
data to guide business strategy is a relatively
new focus in the consumer goods industry,
and that UST Inc. was one of the first
companies to see the need and apply a
solution. He says, “UST Inc. uses its
consolidated data ware-house to devise
targeted selling programs based on extremely
detailed analysis. The company takes
consumer-demand data and integrates it into
its selling programs,” says Hall.
As UST Inc. continues to build its solution by
adding sophisticated analysis software and
more data sources, it disseminates real-world
information from its integrated systems
throughout the organization. The data helps
everyone on the marketing and sales teams
to work more effectively. DeCredico says, “We
now have a foundation in place to build stateof-the-art systems that will allow our sales
executives not just to plan, but also to
execute better business strategies.”
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For more information about G4 Analytics
products and services, call (646) 2905080 or visit the Web site at:
www.g4analytics.com
For more information about UST Inc.
products and services, call (203) 6611100 or visit the Web site at:
www.ustinc.com
Software and Services
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This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published June 2007
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
Edition
− Microsoft SQL Server 2000
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