1-800 Contacts

Introduction:

1-800-CONTACTS was launched in 1995, the company was operating with only 30 professionals ,today it is considered as one of the top wide-reaching contact lens supplier selling to clients using its Web site and cost-free call center. The company’s business strategy is focusing in keeping high inventory level of an approximately 20 million contact lenses in order to deliver a more choice flexibility to the customers with a better selection from a variety of contact lenses at lower prices than retail visual channels.

Background of the Problem:

Since its launch, the company’s systems were regularly updated and upgraded.

However, in 2003 , both the size and growth of the business necessitated a more practical approach to handle the clients orders and permit the business specialists and management to a more details regarding the ordering patterns, strategy promotions and other business related activities. The old system that was deployed by the company was Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000. Although this system provided many good features like its reporting system , it had many limitation that could not match the new development in the business environment. For example: inconsistency in collecting data stemming from the different systems. Additionally, the formed reports involved adequate complexity which need the support of at minimum two IT staff, making it time consuming. According to Jim Hill , Data Warehouse Manager for 1-800 CONTACTS. “No one outside of the IT department had direct access to the data. That put a strain on our IT department because IT employees had to be available to run reports for internal users. It was very difficult to develop any ad hoc analysis in a timely fashion and was an inefficient use of company resources.”(1)

The Solution:

To overcome the limitations of the old system ,1-800 CONTACTS adopted a new data warehouse to gather necessary information in one site, so concerned users could simply get an access to the data on...