BRIEF HISTORY OF 3M’S GEDW – GLOBAL
ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE
According to a November 2000 Bloomberg
Businessweek article ,3M grew from a modest seller of
sandpaper to a $15.7 billion per year company that sells
more than 50,000 products in 200 countries and has
more than 70,000 employees
As of the calendar year end for 2009 the company sold
$23.1 billion with more than 55,000 products in 200
countries and has more than 76,000 employees – 47%
increase in sales
BRIEF HISTORY OF 3M’S GEDW – GLOBAL
ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE
Before 1995 3M was ignoring it’s customer service
relationships by being organized into 50 different product
centered divisions with their own IT groups, strategy, products
and markets
Customers had to deal with a host of 3M divisions to purchase
all the products they needed for their business
IN 1995 3M RESTRUCTURED INTO 7 MARKET
SEGMENTS
Industrial – abrasives, adhesives, construction, industrial tape
Transportation – aerospace, automotive, marine, traffic safety
Health Care – dental, drug delivery systems, food safety, infection
prevention
Graphics and Safety - Privacy filters, presentation products, touch screens
Consumer and Office - ergonomics, mounting, packaging, Post –it products
Electro and Communications - communication technologies, electronics
design
Specialty Material – home improvement, first aid, air cleaning, fly fishing
Each segment was charged with serving customers better and efficiently
meeting their needs.
3M VIDEOS
Glass Bubbles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6ZBRoJdz9o&feature=related
Love story – story of post-its
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owXj_TWPI94
GLOBAL ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE IS
BORN
1995 Alan L. Messerli of 3M started an initiative to build
an integrated database that would help develop
better customer relations by providing easy to get to
sales and product reports – gets initial funding in mid
1996
Before the GEDW was created it was easier to ask a
customer how much it spent with 3M than to research
the figures internally
GLOBAL ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE
3M spent $30 million initial development costs + 2.6
million per year in maintenance
3M is saving more than $10 million a year in
maintenance costs of antiquated division systems
All reporting and decision support applications could be
driven from a single, consistent source of data
GLOBAL ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE
More efficient and accurate sales reporting saves $2.5
million a year
Helps boost sales force productivity up 10% in 1999 to
$220,000 per employee
3M went from a product-centric to a customer-centric
organization
GLOBAL ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE
3M’s GEDW is the foundation for it’s CRM (Customer
Relation Management) initiatives throughout the
company
Before 3M had centralized data they were competing
against themselves, one country or division against
another because they could not accurately show who
was buying what from where and at what pricing levels
GLOBAL ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE
CHALLENGES
Five different platforms were tested and they had to have the
following requirements:
1) The hardware had to be $2M or less, configured any way the
vendor desired
2) The systems would have to respond to specific queries.
3) The process included (1) load the database and see how long it
takes, (2) run the queries and see how long it takes and (3) scale
up the number of users from one to 200.
NCR's Teradata was the only platform that completed the entire
benchmark test.
GLOBAL ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE
CHALLENGES
Messerli's team built the data model and the data
standards according to what was needed for the
future 3M organization, not according to what was
currently done.
This meant that often there was not an exact match
between the existing systems and the data model for
the GEDW
GLOBAL ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE
CHALLENGES
The effort positioned the GEDW for meeting long-term
needs. Now that GEDW data standards exist, 3M finds
that when new operational systems are designed, the
GEDW data standards are used as the basis for data
within the new systems.
The data management team spent more than 20 people
years standardizing data globally. They created more
than 1,000 tables and 3,000 data elements.
GLOBAL ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE
CHALLENGES
The strongest resistance to the GEDW came from the IT
groups, who were losing control of their data as it
shifted decision-support applications away from the
legacy platforms even though the savings from making
this shift were significant and the data was of higher
quality
GLOBAL ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE TODAY
The GEDW includes data for every 3M order, shipment,
customer and product. Direct sales, indirect sales (POS),
price, gross margin, service metrics, demand, forecasts,
inventory, supply plans, procurement, vendor and financial
data are all included
Ultimately the GEDW team compromised on forcing all data
into a set of completely standardized global tables. They
now allow local users to put some of their own local tables
in the warehouse to better meet local needs
GEDW AND THE GLOBAL CRM ARCHITECTURE
It is now clear that customers, markets and the
competitive business environment are converging on
the need for global decision support and global CRM
GEDW initiatives are ongoing, and additional users and
applications are continually added
The GEDW team is now shifting from application training
to more general global data warehouse training
THE BENEFITS OF GEDW
The warehouse was justified based on
IT savings from eliminating dozens of independent data
marts;
Re-engineering sales reporting processes and reducing
the people resources required to report sales and
reward sales forces
Value of understanding customers and markets across
all 3M business units globally
Improving sales force and customer service productivity
THE BENEFITS OF GEDW
Reducing 3M and channel partner cost of providing
product information to customers (marketing
communications cost)
Speeding the product commercialization process
Improving growth and profits by increasing customer
satisfaction
Based on these and other hard benefits, the GEDW
return on investment is 56 percent, substantially
exceeding 3M's investment threshold
LESSONS LEARNED FROM GEDW
Selling the warehouse to the organization takes more than DBMS
skills and experience
Designing a data warehouse requires very good people who
understand the data and the business
A substantial savings can be achieved by creating a single, wellmanaged platform that serves as the single source of data for
reporting and decision support
Do not underestimate the resistance to change
Do an extensive benchmark
TEST QUESTIONS
What does GEDW stand for:
a. Global enterprise data warehouse
b. Global enterprise database warden
c. Globally extrinsic document warehouse
d. Globacom enterprise data warship
How does the boy in the video make sure the girl gets his message:
a. He pledges his undying love
b. He gives her a wedding ring
c. He puts his message on a Post-It
d. He tells her girlfriend
The strongest opposition to the creation of the GEDW came from:
a. Management
b. Existing IT Staff
c. Clerical Staff
d. Mid Level management
REFERENCES
http://www.businessanalysis.cn/tutorial/Idea.Group.Publishing.Organizational.Data.
Mining.eBook-LiB/6518final/LiB0110.html
http://solutions.3m.com/en_US/index.html
http://www.business.illinois.edu/kpmguiuccases/cases/3M/3M%20Case%20Part%20B.pdf