Microsoft SQL Server Customer Solution Case Study Company Improves Data Analysis and Reporting with Business Intelligence Solution Overview Country or Region: United States Industry: Manufacturing Automotive Customer Profile Kelley Blue Book, based in Irvine, California, provides in-depth car and truck pricing information through a Web site and other published materials. The company has more than 400 employees. Business Situation The process the company used to generate pricing trend reports for customers was time-consuming. Additionally, the company could not effectively analyze all its data. Solution Kelley Blue Book recently implemented a comprehensive business intelligence solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database software and Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. Benefits Full integration with IT environment Short deployment time for new sales product Increased efficiency for sales staff Improved analytical capabilities More-targeted marketing for business customers With the flexibility of SQL Server 2005 Analysis and PerformancePoint Server, employees can quickly and easily view data. They can create a Market Watch report in just a few minutes. Bruce Hoffman, Manager of Business Intelligence and Data Management, Kelley Blue Book Kelley Blue Book analyzes and publishes data on new and used vehicles. Large automotive manufacturers, as well as individual car and truck buyers, use the Kelley Blue Book Web site to find indepth pricing information. The company gathers data from these Web site visits to create trend reports for manufacturers. However, the report-generation process was time-consuming, and employees were not able to effectively analyze all the data. In 2006, Kelley Blue Book implemented a solution based on Microsoft Business Intelligence technologies. With its new analytical capabilities, Kelley Blue Book has improved sales staff efficiency and created a compelling new Web analytics product that can provide its business customers with more targeted data for their marketing efforts. The company expects to see its customer base and revenues grow in response.
Situation Kelley Blue Book, founded in 1926 and based in Irvine, California, provides vehicle buyers and sellers with comprehensive information on new and used cars and trucks. The company, which currently has 400 employees, publishes up-to-date vehicle pricing and values through its Web site, kbb.com. The site features the New Car Blue Book Value, a measure that reveals actual prices people across the United States are paying for new cars. We receive about 12 million unique visitors each month on the site, says Bruce Hoffman, Manager of Business Intelligence and Data Management, Kelley Blue Book. The company uses specific information gathered from these online visits to generate reports that it presents to automotive manufacturers. Two out of three site visitors who come to our pricing reports pages are considered likely to purchase a car within several months, Hoffman says. We record analytical data from these page visits, such as which cars are most popular in certain regions. However, Kelley Blue Book had struggled to put that information into a form its customers could easily use to predict buyer trends. We had only a limited way to deliver information to manufacturers, states Hoffman. That involved extracting data from the Web site into Microsoft Office Excel 2003 spreadsheet software, and then creating lengthy reports based on those files. That was a manual, time-consuming process for our sales and marketing employees, he continues. Because there was no effective way to get the most targeted data on a certain region, they would have to create a 1,000-page report with all of the data included. It took too much effort to create that one report, so they could only do that once a month. Even though that data had the potential to be useful, there was too much of it for manufacturers to make sense of. It was impossible to tell a meaningful story with the data, says Hoffman. Our marketing team had all this great information, but they didn t have a way to package and sell it. They lacked a good software tool to make that happen. Solution In January 2006, a Kelley Blue Book employee alerted Hoffman to Microsoft Business Intelligence, a set of fully integrated business intelligence technologies that can help reduce the complexity of organizing and distributing information. As the Kelley Blue Book IT infrastructure was already based on the Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system, Hoffman was immediately interested in this set of technologies. The new solution, which the company implemented that same January, gives the Kelley Blue Book analytics team the ability to quickly and easily collect targeted data on automotive sales and trends. It includes Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (with SQL Server Analysis, Integration, and Reporting ), Microsoft Office Excel 2003, and Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 business intelligence software. Now, Kelley Blue Book employees can import more than 100,000 rows of Microsoft Office Excel 2003 data from the Web site into a SQL Server 2005 database each day. From there, SQL Server 2005 Integration moves that data into an online analytical processing (OLAP) cube, which is an arrangement of data in arrays to allow for quick analysis. The cube is viewed using PerformancePoint Server 2007 and is delivered to sales representatives via a dashboard server. Using these business intelligence products, the analytics team can analyze data about shoppers who are looking for new vehicles.
We put together a prototype on a laptop in only a few days. Within a few weeks, our analytics team was out in the field selling Market Watch as a product. Bruce Hoffman, Manager of Business Intelligence and Data Management, Kelley Blue Book For example, they can track shopping behavior based on segment, automotive manufacturer, model, and other factors. They can also measure shopping statistics nationally or locally by ZIP/postal code, state/province, or region. Employees can use SQL Server Reporting and Report Builder to quickly create and deliver custom reports that compare buyer data. This data is easily presented to Kelley Blue Book employees through interactive dashboards on their computers. Several members of the Kelley Blue Book IT department employed these technologies to create a new Web analytics sales report product, called Market Watch. With analytical data at their fingertips, sales staff can quickly produce a customized Market Watch report and deliver it to an automotive manufacturer or individual customer. Benefits Kelley Blue Book now has a business intelligence solution that integrates fully with its existing IT environment, an advantage that helped the company deploy a new Web analytics sales product in a short amount of time. With the solution, Kelley Blue Book has reduced the time it takes sales staff to create reports, gained more in-depth analytical capabilities, and can better assist business customers with targeting their own marketing efforts. Also, because it expects its customer base to grow, the company anticipates its revenues to rise. Full Integration with Existing IT Environment The new Kelley Blue Book Web business intelligence solution takes advantage of the company s existing Windows -based IT environment, which already included products such as Microsoft Office Excel 2003. We already had some of these technologies, says Hoffman. We just weren t taking advantage of them as well as we should have been. We have so much data, but we were actually doing very little in terms of mining that data. Now, the organization can use its new solution to quickly analyze sales data that is exported from Excel 2003. Short Deployment Time for New Sales Product The solution s ease of use played a key role in the rapid deployment of Market Watch, the company s new Web analytics product. One essential tool was Microsoft Business Intelligence Development Studio, the 32-bit development environment for SQL Server Analysis, Integration, and Reporting projects. This tool helped ease development and shortened the overall deployment time for Kelley Blue Book developers. For example, when creating Market Watch, developers specifically took advantage of the design features of the Business Intelligence Development Studio, such as an easy-to-use graphical user interface, to quickly build OLAP cubes. As a result, deployment time was very short. The configuration and design tools really helped us build the product quickly, says Hoffman. We put together a prototype on a laptop in only a few days. Within a few weeks, our analytics team was out in the field selling Market Watch as a product. Increased Efficiency for Sales Staff In the past, Hoffman says, it would take a sales person several hours to build the right amount of data for a report. He or she had to spend a lot of time thinking about which data to find and include, he remarks. But now, with the flexibility of SQL Server 2005 Analysis and PerformancePoint Server, employees can quickly and easily view data and move different pieces of information in and out of a data cube. They can create a Market Watch report in just a few minutes.
The business intelligence solution also provides a simpler, less time-consuming process for generating Market Watch reports. The solution gives sales people a much bigger block of data, easily delivered through SQL Server 2005 Analysis and SQL Server 2005 Reporting, says Hoffman. Now they can pull all the data at once, whereas before they could only analyze small portions at a time. Report generation is much simpler and much more efficient. Improved Analytical Capabilities Because of the data analysis features of the solution s technologies, Kelley Blue Book analytics team members now have a tool that gives them excellent analytical capabilities. For example, data about vehicles exists in multiple categories on the Web site. So, when a site visitor looks at an automobile, that site visit is logged in different categories such as ZIP/postal code, city/province, or region. However, Kelley Blue Book analytics team members did not previously have a method of retrieving data from each category. recently launched a new vehicle in the marketplace, says Hoffman. Using a Market Watch report, we were able to show them data about which areas of the country had the most interest in that type of vehicle, based on user data from our site. Using such data, Kelley Blue Book business customers will be able to better target their marketing efforts. They can see information about a car before they even receive the sales data on that vehicle, Hoffman says. This information helps them determine which markets to choose for sales incentives, or track how well an ad campaign might perform. They can better identify what the true competitive landscape is by market. Also, because Kelley Blue Book is able to better help its customers with such information, it anticipates that its base of customers using Market Watch will grow. Our research revenues are expected to double in 2007, compared to 2006. We saw we had a unique revenue opportunity and this solution allowed us to address that, says Hoffman. The developers who created Market Watch were able to use new features in SQL Server 2005 Analysis, such as the ability to organize cube dimensions better, Hoffman says. Now, each site visit is counted in each of those categories, so we can produce data on each one. Using those capabilities, our customers viewing a Market Watch report can easily compare vehicles by region or city. Those kinds of features help position the product as a source of intelligence about consumer behavior as it pertains to new car information, adds Hoffman. More-Targeted Marketing for Business Customers Data reports generated at Kelley Blue Book are now more comprehensive and useful for the company s business customers. One of our biggest customers, a car manufacturer,
For More Information For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com For more information about Kelley Blue Book products and services, visit the Web site at: www.800bluebook.com Microsoft Server Product Portfolio For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to: www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is comprehensive, integrated data management and analysis software that enables organizations to reliably manage missioncritical information and confidently run today s increasingly complex business applications. By providing high availability, security enhancements, and embedded reporting and data analysis tools, SQL Server 2005 helps companies gain greater insight from their business information and achieve faster results for a competitive advantage. And, because it s part of the Microsoft server product portfolio, SQL Server 2005 is designed to integrate seamlessly with your other server infrastructure investments. For more information about SQL Server 2005, go to: www.microsoft.com/sqlserver Software and Microsoft Server Product Portfolio Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Microsoft Office Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Technologies Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published July 2007