There are considerable economies of scale in retail banking but managing complexity and risk in large organizations requires effective Business Intelligence systems. Lloyds Banking Group, the largest and most successful retail bank in the UK chose Thorogood to help them scale up their sales analytics applications to manage sales performance across the expanded group.
The Background
Sales analytics applications have to be flexible because sales activities change often to respond to competitive threats and new opportunities. LTSB had achieved this flexibility successfully using Oracle Express technology.
However, Express was no longer under active development by Oracle. Its scale limitations had also become an issue because the integration of LTSB and HBOS to form Lloyds Banking Group had significantly increased the organization’s size. To maintain the responsiveness and flexibility of the new organization at scale the Business Performance Management function in Lloyds Banking Group asked Thorogood to help them redevelop the sales analytics applications.
Objectives
The objectives were to try to match the modeling power and flexibility of the existing technology while also adding advantages of particular value to a large and complex organization such as greater ease of use, scalability, the ability to share insights and information widely and to collaborate.
The Solution
Thorogood redeveloped the sales analytics application using the Microsoft BI product stack. Analysis Services is the dimensional analysis engine, providing analytical power similar to that of Express, with Excel as the widely familiar and easy to use front-end. SharePoint is the medium for enterprisewide information sharing and collaboration.
