Business Requirements at Canadian Tire Essay

The Canadian wash up Corporation (CTC) was initiated in 1922 when two brothers opened an railroad car parts store and garage in Toronto, Canada. From 1922 to 2003, their makeup grew into a much larger profits of line of workes, including retail, m itary services, and pet affairum operations (Haggerty, 2003). There was 45,000 employees working at the various CVC businesses across Canada, and much than than 1,000 stores and gas bars. As stated in the reading, CTC businesses were actually comprised into pentad orchestrate offs including the pastime Canadian bear sell, Canadian tire monetary Services, Candida peter out Petroleum, PartSource, and Marks Work Wearhouse.Initially, this group of businesses used numerous diametric hardware, software, operating systems, network services, reading tools, and applications. As explained in the reading, the systems at Canadian expel Retail included POS (point-of sales) systems which were networked to the Canadian Tire Retail entropy center. The systems at Marks Work Wearhouse, on the other hand, operated differently and remained separate from the other CTC corporations. While Canadian Tire Retail ran IBM-AS/400 systems in stores, CTFS utilized IBM RS6000 with Intel-Based workstations.PartSource and Canadian Tire Petroleums daily transactions were relayed straight off into the corporate network from their point-of-sale systems. The Canadian Tire Corporations IT department operated and supported all over a hundred different mainframe, server, desktop bumpment and integration tools, ten different hardware platforms, 14 operating systems, seven database management systems, and over 450 different production applications. Much of the systems were described as ecological niche and sunset technologies indicating outdated and inefficient technology.For this reason, and others, IT spending at CTC was considerably higher than the industry standard, and this would only march on to grow. It was necessary for Ca nadian Tire Corporation to develop an integrated data warehouse system. There were more key individuals whose roles were essential in the shift to growth a new MODULE 2 anatomy discover commercial enterprise REQUIREMENTS 3 dodge for Canadian Tire Corporation. Perhaps the most crucial role was that of Andy Wnek, Chief Information Officer/Chief fiscal Officer.Wnek led the strategic plan in 2002 (and sack forward) to develop the first IT strategy document in many years. Michael Eubanks was hired as Director of merchandising IT which came with the responsibility of creatively partnering more with Canadian Tire Retail. Bridget Martens was assigned as Business Intelligence tutor in early 2003. She was given the responsibility of arrange the business newsworthiness program as it began. These individuals vie key roles in the ontogeny of the business intelligence initiative at Canadian Tire Corporation.The capital punishment of a data warehouse involved displace out a vision to be an vigorous IT team, aligned to business priorities, operating a simpler expert environment with the appropriate standardized serve welles (Haggerty, 2003). In evidence to achieve this vision, many requirements were necessary to move forward. setoff of all, Canadian Tire Retails type had historically reflected that of a wholesaler, and the IT group had the challenge of ever-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 give way data as a retailer. They were required to play at data on a more analytical basis, analyzing the product, store, and margin trends (Haggerty, 2003). In order to do this, the IT group built the IW in which data was extracted, transformed, and loaded from a variety of sources. This was the essence of construction the data warehouse to consolidate the date into one main system where the information could be analyze to help form critical business decis ions.Additionally, triad imperative requirements were identified during the IT strategy 2003. These included the requirements of congruous better aligned to the business to support strategic and operational priorities and adaptability to changing business priorities, controlling be through simplifying the technical computer architecture, improving productivity, and controlling expenses, and implementing regime of IT resources including standardization, risk management, and MODULE 2 COURSE PROJECT BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS 4 developing/implementing sustainable processes.The requirements determined 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 (Haggerty, 2003) and qualify 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 fourthly program involved technological direction which lay the foundation for re-architecting the organization (Haggerty, 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 reason, 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 moot further details the journey of CTC, along with its weave 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. MODULE 2 COURSE PROJECT BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS 5 Reference s Haggerty, N. & Meister, D. (2003). Business Intelligence Strategy at Canadian Tire Case Study. Ivey Management Services.