SQL Reporting Services vs Crystal Reports: With all the data being generated, Overstock.com decided to take action and implement a new data warehouse system. Teradata worked as the lead consultant to implement the new data warehouse on its platform. Overstock.com then looked for a reporting tool to serve as the front-end of the system for its business users, so that business users could more easily view product inventory.

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Challenge

Founded in 1999 as online shopping was skyrocketing, Overstock.com, Inc. is an online outlet retailer offering discount, brand-name products for consumers across the United States. The company quickly realized that the Internet couldn't compete effectively with normal retail sales channels, but was tailor-made for product liquidation due to the highly fragmented and inefficient nature of the industry in the offline world. Since that time, Overstock.com has quickly become the online leader in a market valued at $60 billion. Moreover, Overstock.com's gross merchandise sales have blossomed from $1.8 million in 1999 to more than $540 million in 2004. The company calculates that, since launching the site in October 1999, it has saved consumers millions of dollars off the retail prices recommended by manufacturers.

Keeping track of inventory and sales on over 650,000 products located in several warehouses across the United States is a challenging task for the growing company. Its primary warehouses are in Indiana and Salt Lake City, Utah. However, Overstock.com also works with partners that ship directly from their factories.

With all the data being generated, Overstock.com decided to take action and implement a new data warehouse system. Teradata worked as the lead consultant to implement the new data warehouse on its platform. Overstock.com then looked for a reporting tool to serve as the front-end of the system for its business users, so that business users could more easily view product inventory, decide which items to delete, expand, or promote, reduce inventory carrying costs, and much more.

"Our previous reporting system basically broke down because it could not keep up with the growth of the company. We had to turn it off to keep up with website volume," says Jack Garzella, who runs Overstock's Enterprise Data Warehouse Analytics. "And, we had stale information, which wasn't very useful in making sound business decisions intra-day."