McKesson's Data Warehouse Revolutionizes Inventory Management

Strategic Insights -

McKesson Corp., the largest provider of pharmaceutical and health care products and services in North America, has successfully implemented one of the industry's largest data warehouses running on Pyramid's highly scalable enterprise servers. This strategic data warehouse will provide McKesson with a new level of business intelligence to improve sales and customer service, making it uniquely positioned to add value to both its customers and suppliers.

Key Takeaways:

  • McKesson's data warehouse is expected to grow to more than a terabyte of data by early 1996, with the goal of analyzing sales, shipping, and inventory data from different systems across business units.
  • The data warehouse will enable McKesson to analyze 13 months of sales information down to individual line items, represented in 250 GB's of on-line information, for a single application.
  • Pyramid's data warehouse solution will help McKesson evaluate, monitor, and enhance the revenue of its customers, dramatically improve inventory management, and innovate more effective and responsive sales and marketing initiatives.
  • The data warehouse is currently operational and providing in-depth analysis of sales history to enhance revenues of not only McKesson, but its customers and suppliers.
  • Pyramid is one of the few open systems server developers to offer both symmetric multi-processing (SMP) and massively parallel processing (MPP) technology, which was a key factor in McKesson's decision to choose Pyramid as the platform for its data warehouse.
  • The close working relationship between Pyramid and Oracle enabled optimization of Oracle Parallel Server on Pyramid's SMP and MPP offerings, the Nile and Reliant RM1000 respectively.
  • McKesson plans to integrate the Reliant RM1000 Parallel Server and its MPP technology with existing Pyramid Nile systems, which will enable the data warehouse to scale up to hundreds of processing nodes and tens of terabytes of on-line information.

Statistics:

  • McKesson is the largest provider of pharmaceutical and health care products and services in North America, with revenues of $13.2 billion.
  • The data warehouse is expected to grow to more than a terabyte of data by early 1996.
  • 250 GB's of on-line information will be analyzed for a single application, representing 13 months of sales history.
  • Pyramid's data warehouse solution will help McKesson evaluate, monitor, and enhance the revenue of its customers, with the goal of improving inventory management and sales and marketing initiatives.

Sources:

  • "Pyramid's Data Warehouse Solution Enables McKesson to Analyze Sales and Inventory Data" (July 24, 1995)
  • Pyramid Technology - A Siemens Nixdorf Company (Pyramid is one of the few open systems server developers to offer both SMP and MPP technology)
  • Oracle Parallel Server Database (Optimized on Pyramid's SMP and MPP offerings)
  • McKesson Corp. (NYSE: MCK) - largest provider of pharmaceutical and health care products and services in North America