RapidDecision Gives Amway the Data Warehouse it needs to remain competitive. Benefits include faster closings, hundreds of thousands per year in measurable savings, and instant access to detailed and up-to-date information.

As a $9.2 billion dollar pioneer in the direct selling industry, Amway has helped the world live better since 1959. Based in Ada Michigan, Amway creates unique, high-quality health, beauty, personal and home care products. The company and its affiliates support more than three million independent business owners and 14,000 employees worldwide and who provide products and services in more than 80 countries. An enterprise this complex can only be managed effectively if its IT infrastructure can provide detailed, accurate and up-to-date information to decision makers.

Amway North America began using JD Edwards Enterprise (JDE) software for back-office processing in 2003. The software handled transactions well, but it was not easy to create essential analytical reports. Amway purchased the data warehouse that JD Edwards was selling at the time. It only contained balances and a limited number of fields and could not drill down into the necessary details.

Doug McClure, Manager of Financial Reporting, explains why Amway North America’s first reaction was to try to enhance the data warehouse by adding fields and transactions. “We spent two frustrating years trying to make the old data warehouse suit our needs. Three Amway IT staff members were dedicated to the effort, but we still had problems getting the detail we needed. We didn’t know enough about JDE’s inner workings to be able to capture the necessary data. The JDE data field names were confusing and the documentation on the program design was not helpful.”

According to McClure “Initially, users couldn’t wait to start using the data warehouse, but poor data quality and missing fields combined with slow progress on enhancements quickly dampened their enthusiasm. We came to the realization that trying to build a data warehouse ourselves took too long, and fell short of meeting our needs.”

The Solution
McClure discovered that RapidDecision® was exactly what the enterprise needed – “a pre-built data warehouse that supports JDE with outstanding features: real-time updating, drill-down to the lowest level, support for all JDE modules, data formatted so that users could understand it, and much more. Best of all, Amway IT staff did not have to continually maintain and support the data warehouse.

McClure was skeptical at first having heard that pre-built warehouses do not always deliver as promised. A demonstration of RapidDecision put everyone’s concerns to rest. RapidDecision data marts for general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets and expense management were all fully operational in less than 45 days. This was even more impressive because Amway upgraded to a new JDE release at the same time, requiring every data mart to be validated twice.

The Results
Amway’s user community started using the new data warehouse immediately. Users loved having access to detailed JDE data in real time. Senior Financial Analyst, Jon Sprau, could instantly verify ledger balances and obtain transaction detail to provide timely commentary. The ability to analyze real-time detail during the close process allowed Amway to catch problems before close instead of after close. Net result – shortened close times, increased accuracy, and enhanced commentary. Sprau says, “RapidDecision provides a night-and-day improvement in my ability to do my job. We have more financial control because we have unfettered access to highly reliable transactional data.”

RapidDecision users no longer need to rely on IT for queries or reports. The three Amway IT staff members needed to support the home built marts have been freed up for other initiatives. Moving to new JDE releases no longer means modification of reports – RapidDecision handles it.

McClure sees RapidDecision as more than a logistical vehicle, “It’s what we need to be competitive. The value of being confident in the accuracy and accessibility of all JDE fields in the data warehouse is impossible to overstate. Confidence in the data warehouse stimulates Amway’s financial community to use RapidDecision and creates a sustained trust and respect between the financial people and Amway senior management. Confidence allows for decision-making where we can turn ‘on a dime’! RapidDecision has done all that for us.”

“Amway’s data marts need to be ‘purpose-neutral.’ As our data requirements evolve, we continually find that RapidDecision has already anticipated our needs and the data is waiting on us, every time!”

– Doug McClure, Manager, Financial Reporting, Amway