Brokers compete fiercely for their clients, and players in this industry compete fiercely for brokers to resell their products and services. To ensure its brokers have the best possible tools to offer their clients, this company decided to create a vast data warehouse that would put advanced tools into its brokers’ hands, so they can increase their quality of advice and service. The customer also wished to create tools its brokers could use to manage their clientele better, in the hope that these tools would increase their loyalty and, ultimately, sales. The customer selected 64-bit Windows Server as its platform, running on HP SuperDome servers.

Solution
Initiated in 2002, this project saw Microsoft Consulting Services engage Avanade to perform the full lifecycle from the project, from architectural design to data extraction, data transformation and data loading. Avanade designed and deployed a 64-bit SQL Server 2000 data warehouse of over 10 terabytes, including a 64-bit Analysis Services implementation. Avanade also architected and built the ETL application using Microsoft Data Transformation Services. The project ran approximately two years, including designing the architectural framework, proof-of-concept and final data warehouse. The project team included architects from both Avanade and MCS and a combined client-Avanade project team of over 10. The completed solution uses Office Web Components and XMLA to deliver rich analytic tools to nearly 10,000 users. The project currently in pilot, the new solution is due to go live by end of 2004.

Results
The customer now has powerful new services brokers consume over the Web that enhance the services they can offer their clients.

• If a stock is re-rated, brokers can instantly call up a report listing all affected clients and contact them;
• Analysis tools probe client behaviour to offer suggestions for new investments;
• Market analysis tools enable brokers to offer better advice