Business Requirements at Canadian Tire

As stated In the reading, CT businesses were actually comprised Into five groups including the following: Canadian Tire Retail, Canadian Tire Financial Services, Candida Tire Petroleum, Paratroopers, and Mark's Work Warehouse. Initially, this group network services, development tools, and applications. As explained in the reading, the systems at Canadian Tire Retail included POS (point-of sales) systems which were networked to the Canadian Tire Retail data center. The systems at Mark's Work Warehouse, on the other hand, operated differently and remained separate from the other CT corporations.

While Canadian Tire Retail ran IBM-AS/400 systems in stores, ACTS utilized IBM ERRORS with Intel- Based workstations. Paratroopers and Canadian Tire Petroleum's daily transactions were relayed directly into the corporate network from their point-of-sale systems. The Canadian Tire Corporation's IT department operated and supported over a hundred different mainframe, server, desktop development and integration tools, ten different hardware platforms, 14 operating systems, seven database management systems, and over 450 different production applications.

Perhaps the most crucial role was that of Andy Wine, Chief Information Officer/Chief Financial Officer. Wine led the strategic plan in 2002 (and going forward) to develop the first IT strategy document in many years. Michael Banks was hired as Director of Marketing IT which came with the responsibility of creatively partnering more with Canadian Tire Retail. Bridget Martens was assigned as Business Intelligence Manager in early 2003. She was given the responsibility of coordinating the business intelligence program as it began.

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These individuals played key roles in the development of the business intelligence initiative at Canadian Tire Corporation. The implementation of a data warehouse involved laying out a vision to be "an agile IT team, aligned to business priorities, operating a simpler technical environment with the appropriate standardized processes" (Hagglers, 2003). In order to achieve this vision, many requirements were necessary to move forward. First of all, Canadian Tire Retail's image had historically reflected that of a wholesaler, and the IT group had the challenge of changing this image to that of a retailer, rather than a wholesaler.

In order to do this, the team realized that more data was necessary in order to analyze data as a retailer. They were required to look at data on a more analytical basis, analyzing the product, store, and margin trends (Hagglers, 2003). In order to do this, the IT group built the II in which data was extracted, transformed, and loaded from a variety of sources. This was the essence of building the data warehouse: to consolidate the date into one main system where the information could be analyzed to help form critical business decisions.

The requirements laid out in this vision actually prompted the development of four programs from the periods of 2003 to 2005. The first program involved implementing a CIO governance program. The second program, provided "organizational and people capabilities" (Hagglers, 2003) ND specified key services that the IT group would need to be able to support to the organization. The third involved process improvements which helped to organize an annual IT strategy planning process.

The fourth program involved technological direction which "laid the foundation for re-architecture the organization" (Hagglers, 2003). The areas of business intelligence and data management, application deployment, integration and messaging, standardization and simplification, and security deployment were five areas that required immediate attention. For this season, these areas also serve as requirements for the data warehouse and business intelligence initiatives to take place.

Canadian Tire Corporation is an example of a company in distress whose current architecture and infrastructures did not suffice for longevity and success. The case study further details the Journey of CT, along with its web of networked businesses, as it attempted to change business strategy in an effort to create a more enhanced system of data warehousing and business intelligence. 5 References Hagglers, N. & Mister, D. (2003). Business Intelligence Strategy at Canadian Tire [Case Study]. Vive Management Services.

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