men’s warehouse, houston tx Link to heading
Background:
TMW systems folks are spending too much time on maintenance and don’t have enough time. They have inherited a number of systems and were not entirely aware of the reasons for many design decisions. Because of the high maintenance of these systems they have not had time for a comprehensive review.
Hyperion systems have not been upgraded since their installation. TMW is using applications which are 2-3 years out of date.
TMW expects to continue to grow. New users and new applications are coming on board. The current system will not accommodate this growth.
Some of the major issues associated with the problems with the system are:
- Overall Poor Database Performance
- Year End Maintenance is complex and confusing.
- End Users are avoiding the use of Analyzer.
- End Users are not using Hyperion Reports.
- Manual intervention is required on automatable processes.
- Security is complex and decentralized.
- Custom VBA code complicates otherwise simple reporting.
Recommendations by Priority Link to heading
| # | Description | Details | Rec Level | Effort | Impact | Priority | Impl Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SSAudit off | Unless SSAudit is being used to recover lock & send data on a regular basis I recommend that it be turned off. | H | L | H | A | High |
| 10 | Attribute Shift | Depending upon reporting, Attribute dimensions should be shifted into the hierarchy. | M | L-M | M | A | Low Level |
| 12 | Block & Index | Many of the applications are using block sizes over 60K. This is not recommended. Such applications with large measure sets should be split so that block sizes can be reduced | H | H | H | A | Low |
| 14 | Application Use Case | Each application should be evaluated in terms of its primary use case, reporting, analysis or audit. Applications should be restructured to provide optimum performance for it’s use case | H | M | H | A | Low |
| 15 | ASO Conversion | Some applications may be able to use the ASO option | M | M | H | A | Low |
| 2 | Tomcat Upgrade | Weblogic is available for the applications. It should be deployed instead of Tomcat. | H | M | M | B | Low |
| 4 | Currency Conversion | Currency conversions should be done in relational instead of in the cubes unless multiple hedges are regularly used. | M | M | M | B | High |
| 7 | Scenario Dimension Changes | A number of variance calculations that are generated dynamically in blocks might be more efficiently processed in the middle tier. | M | M | H | B | Low Level |
| 8 | MUOM Dimension | This dimension looks to be superfluous. Get rid of it. | H | M | H | B | Low Level |
| 11 | Report Buffers | All Report buffers are at 10K, increase them to 256K | H | L | H | B | High |
| 16 | Oracle Vs Essbase Calcs | Some detail measures should not be loaded into the cubes based on detailed reporting requirements. | M | H | H | B | Low |
| 17 | Essbase Calculations | Best practices recommendations | M | M | M | B | High |
| 18 | Security Migration | Security should be centralized | H | M | M | B | High |
| 19 | Report Self- Service | End users should be more directly involved in reporting | H | M | M | B | High |
| 20 | Design For Analysis | Cubes can be reverse-engineered | H | M | M | B | High |
| 3 | Smart Builds | Dimension builds should accept separate metadata feeds and only rebuild cubes when there are identifiable changes. | M | M-H | M | C | High |
| 5 | Citrix | Use of Citrix should be avoided if possible | H | L | M | C | None |
| 6 | Business Rules | If custom calcs can be built, they should be to avoid inefficiencies in calcs generated by Hyperion Business Rules | H | M | H | C | High |
| 9 | Default Caches | All of the databases seem to be using default cache settings. These should be modified to maximize index hit rates. | M | L | M | C | High Level |
| 13 | Redundant Backup | Essbase cubes are dumped and rebuilt each cycle. These data might be more efficiently stored as a relational source. | M | M | H | C | High |