17 September 2008

Ladbrokes needed a new BI reporting system for its stores

Ladbrokes turned to IMGroup for a more cost-effective, flexible and scalable reporting environment to replace its existing system.

Ladbrokes is the leading bookmaker in the UK, Ireland and Belgium, with over 2,600 owned and operated high street shops taking up to 10 million bets a week. Despite the huge daily volume of cash transactions in the Ladbrokes retail network, analysis and reporting of actuals against budget performance in the branches was in need of improvement – it was relying heavily on a time-consuming and inefficient manual report delivery process.

Ladbrokes needed to seek a more flexible and cost-effective alternative to its current systems at head office to provide a sophisticated set of reporting tools for its retail outlets. Depending on the initial project’s success, Ladbrokes was also keen to streamline compliance monitoring and security at its high street branches by making greater use of business intelligence (BI) technologies.

Ladbrokes turned to IMGroup, a UK specialist consultancy in BI, for advice. After an extensive business assessment, IMGroup recommended Microsoft SQL Server 2005 BI reporting suite, including Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services. The solution offered Ladbrokes an integrated suite and one-stop shop for BI. ProClarity 6.1, from wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary ProClarity, was the choice of analytical system offering users a robust and intuitive interface. It integrates tightly with the Microsoft environment and offers unique visualisation options.

Vaughan Powell, practice group director at IMGroup, says: “Ladbrokes did consider other options to SQL Server 2005 but they felt strongly that the Microsoft environment was strategically the best route to take.”

By using its reporting and analytics features, Ladbrokes is now accurately tracking and interpreting patterns in its historical data. The result is valuable information that in future will help the company make more informed business decisions about developing new products, minimising risk and improving security.

Because SQL Server 2005 has an extensive set of built-in BI tools, it offers a much lower total cost of ownership than Ladbrokes’ previous system. “By choosing SQL Server over Oracle Express, we saved on the cost of a data integration solution, a reporting solution, and a notification solution – all of which would have cost extra with our previous system,” says Hawthorn. “We have also been able to use the same environment for staff scheduling reporting, human resources and finance projects, as well as meeting the original aim of distributing actual versus budget information to our retail betting shops network.”

The stability of the data management and reporting solution, in addition to the familiar Windows operating system interface and ease of use, has greatly enhanced the productivity of IT operations.

“Instead of continually troubleshooting failures and using manual processes, IT staff are now able to focus on applications and processes that further boost overall operations efficiency, such as reporting and documentation,” says Hawthorn. “We’re also expecting a substantial reduction in operating costs, although it is hard to quantify that benefit immediately.”

This article originally featured in the autumn 2008 edition of Retailspeak magazine.