More Doing.The Home Depot

Francisco Martinez3/3/10

Situation

• The Home Depot wanted to implement a dynamic online reporting system with “drill-down” capabilities

• I’m a consultant with MicroStrategy, the leading business intelligence company providing the software for the new system

• The Home Depot wanted a system design that was not out-of-the-box• The design would hyperlink to dashboards across 10 org levels, 5 time

slices (WTD, MTD, QTD, HYTD, YTD) for 23 roles(positions) and 20 subject areas.

• The desired design would require the development of 23,000 dashboards (10 or levels x 5 time slices x 23 roles x 20 subject area = 23,000!!!)

• This development would be impossible within the timeframe, as well as a performance and maintenance nightmare

• The Home Depot was debating whether MicroStrategy could meet their reporting needs

Solution

Analyze

• Dashboards would have to be created for the 20 subject areas for 20 roles• Tackle the org levels and time slices with a dynamic solution

Investiga

te

• Software has capability to pass org levels dynamically but the design did not fit with out-of-the-box functionality. Discovered this could be done with custom programming

• Researched implementations with other clients and found a custom solution to dynamically change time slices

Design

• Worked with programmers to design a solution that met business requirements for an easy-to-use interface for selecting org levels

• Tested and implemented design changes in the database and metric calculations to see data for all time slices without creating individual dashboards for each

Solution

• The reports or dashboards display data in this area of the interface.

• The selected location on the left determines the options available in the “View By” dropdown, which controls which organization level attribute gets dynamically passed into the report or dashboard

• The To-Date Timeframe selector determines which time slice will be displayed in the data. The same metrics can dynamically calculate any time slice.

Results

• Reduced the amount of development work by a magnitude of 50x from 23,000 dashboards down to 460 dashboards.

• Created a manageable and maintainable solution that made The Home Depot happy with MicroStrategy

• The number of MicroStrategy of MicroStrategy projects at The Home Depot is still growing

• Provides The Home Depot with actionable data• MicroStrategy maintains satisfaction from a large client• MicroStrategy maintains a considerable revenue stream (millions/yr).