Analytic Vision

Company Background

Belk, Inc. is the nation's largest privately owned department store company with more than 300 fashion department stores in 16 contiguous Southern states and sales totaling $3.8 billion in its past fiscal year. The company seeks to be the department store of choice in each community it serves by providing superior service and merchandise that meets customers' needs for fashion, value and quality.

Business Challenges

• Budget processes and cycles time consuming
• Replacement of Hyperion Pillar
• Upgrade Essbase & Reports to System 9
• Budget load times – Pillar was very labor intensive and time consuming to load and maintain
• No standard format for data entry
• No ability to do “what if” scenarios
• Data integrity issues between Lawson, Hyperion Essbase and Hyperion Pillar
• Manual process to load budget data into Hyperion Essbase
• Duplicate calculations between Hyperion Pillar and Essbase
• Limited ability to do cost allocations
• Manual keying of data into Excel
• Labor intensive and manual process for manager plans, guidelines and weekly forecasts

Solution Implemented

Company wide implementation of Hyperion Planning and Hyperion System 9 Essbase and Financial Reporting Upgrade

• Oracle’s Hyperion Planning
• Oracle’s Essbase
• Oracle’s BI Foundation and Tools
• Smart View for Office
   

Business Benefits

• Upgraded all existing Essbase cubes to Hyperion System 9
• Upgraded and replaced existing Reports with System 9 Financial Reporting
• Replaced Hyperion Pillar with Planning
• Reduced Budget Cycle times from 8 weeks to less than 3 weeks for guidelines and manager plans
• Automated data integration between Lawson ERP, Essbase and Planning for Actuals and Budgeting
• Implemented additional financial reporting for Actuals, Guidelines, Manager Plan, Forecast, Goals and 5-year Plan
• Eliminated manual keying of data (actual data, etc.)
• Business Intelligence Platform in place to expand into Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition with phase 2.
• Implemented new cost allocation business rules
• Standardized Web Form and Smart View templates for Planners