Question

What are the Information systems used by Canadian Tire?

Answer 1

BI analytics started with the creation of the information warehouse (IW) at CTC in 1994, which was adopted by the CTC IT community upon CTR's request and support. At that time, the CTC chief executive (CEO) started trying to shift the identity and position of CTR from that of a wholesaler to that of a retailer. This led to the realization that more data was required in order to begin analysing data like a retailer going beyond the store level to examine product, store and margin trends. To promote this new logic, the IT group developed the IW into which data from a variety of sources were collected, transformed and loaded, including POS data downloaded from the stores.

Throughout CTC, user groups slowly assumed greater responsibility for IW data management activities so that they could carry out their own analytical tasks. User groups created applications and employed business analysts who collected data from the IW, then cleaned it up, incorporated additional data and converted it into their own reports. Although this division of labor and IT resources allowed better business decisions as it encouraged better analysis of the available data, BI and IS roles and resources were also spread across the organization.

At store level, CTR managed IBM AS/400 systems with point-of-sale (POS) systems and servers that networked at the CTR data center to IBM mainframe systems. Such programs were sponsored by CTR at 50 per cent and supported by the CTC group of retail programs. The systems also remained entirely isolated from the rest of the CTC network at Mark's Work Wearhouse. CTFS worked IBM RS6000 in Welland with Intel-based workstations

PartSource and CTP were relaying transactions directly from their POS systems through the corporate network. In addition, over 100 different mainframe, server and network development and integration technologies, 10 different hardware platforms, 14 operating systems, seven database management systems and over 450 different production applications and web-based applications and software were funded, controlled, and managed by the CTC IT community. Substantial amounts of hardware, operating systems, network infrastructure, data resources and production and integration tools were listed as "niche" and "sunset" technologies (to be retired) that needed to be tackled in order to achieve the target of IT spending as a percentage of sales under industry benchmarks of about two per cent.