Wal*Mart OLAP, Data Warehouse, Data Marts, Data Mining and Software

Wal-Mart uses OLAP which is an online analytical processing that allows the manipulation of information to support decision making, a data warehouse is a logical collection of information and is necessary for Wal-Mart in order to create customer relationship activities, strategies and campaigns, by creating this data warehouse employees can view all transactions customer has made at a given time any time accurately to check opportunities and to study the different market for prospect customers it also gives a massive data to transform its supplier relationship.

The data mining tools is used to manipulate the data warehouse information and depending who need it or the department that needed this can be small or big and the goal is to create business intelligence, an example on how Wal-Mart can use this tool it could be by department like the receivables department they would create a data mart. Data mart is a subset of a data warehouse in which only a focus portion of the data warehouse information is kept an example for the accounting department would be one that will allow this department to have specific information on the need of a customer and not any information that it will be only for the department making this data mart manageable considering their particular needs to the individual receivables items. Wal-Mart will be capturing a point of sale from over 2,900 stores in 6 countries and continuously transform this data to its massive 7.5 terabyte Terodata data warehouse this will allow more than 3,500 suppliers to access data on their products and perform data analysis. These suppliers will use this information to identify the customer buying patterns at the store and they will use this information to manage local store inventory and identify new merchandise necessary to be brought to the customer.

All this processes have a correlation because data mining tools are to data warehouse users what data manipulation subsystems tools are to database users and then this data warehouse system has the responsibility for converting logical request into physical equivalent through query and reporting tools, intelligent agents, multidimensional analysis tools and statistical tools.

Sam Walton didn’t care much for technology. The legendary patriarch of Wal-Mart Stores was well-known for his lack of excitement about computers, as he called the company’s IT systems. “Truthfully, I never viewed computers as anything more than necessary overhead, he wrote in his 1992 memoir, Made in America. A computer is not –and will never be-a substitute for getting out in your stores and learning what’s going on. Many still consider Wal-Mart pioneering, IT-driven supply chain to be the works most efficient, and the company’s technology standards still command respectful attention from its thousands of supplier” (Thomas Wailgum, cio.com)

Wal-mart uses NeoVista Software deploying the Neo Vista Decision Series which suites the integrated data mining software to replenish and support the decision environment and the purpose of this program is to refine store-item seasonality and build more accurate predictive models for its system-assisted replenishment systems. On a weekly basis, the NeoVista Decision Series analyzes 52 weeks of Wal-Mart POS(point of sale) from each of its 2,900 stores, representing approximately 70 gigabytes and when the result are back adds value to the data warehouse.