"Within Polo’s enterprise-wide business intelligence system, Informatica’s PowerCenter consolidates legacy, relational and Web data from the company's seven operating branches to populate a three-terabyte operational data store," said Robert Abate, senior director of global applications at Polo Ralph Lauren. "The ODS serves as the central foundation for our Service Based Architecture, and feeds both a sophisticated intranet as well as a distributed network of departmental data marts through a Web portal."

"We needed a centralized business intelligence system that would give corporate executives a cross-channel view of the business, but be flexible enough to provide brand managers with detailed information to drive key initiatives at the business-unit level,” recalls Jorge Vargas, systems manager at Polo Ralph Lauren. "Informatica PowerCenter presented a compelling data-management solution.Because of its ability to source from e-business,legacy and relational systems alike, we were able to easily integrate multiple transaction systems, consolidate large volumes of data and customize it for analytical purposes."

Polo’s investment in Informatica’s analytic technology is already paying off.The company has recognized a number of key benefits, including:

• Faster time to market with more targeted products - PowerCenter continuously fuels reporting and analytical systems with up-to-date Point of Sale (POS) and inventory information, helping executives across Polo’s multiple business units quickly deliver new, highly targeted products to market.
• Cross-channel business analysis - PowerCenter consolidates transactional data from across Polo’s wholesale, retail and licensing business units, giving corporate executives a cross-channel view of their entire supply and demand chain, and delivering the information necessary to optimize multi-channel business operations.
• Heightened customer service - PowerCenter integrates customer information across multiple transaction systems and distributes it uniformly among a variety of departmental data marts and other analytical systems, giving brand managers timely information about customer preferences and buying behavior, and enabling service representatives to facilitate a more personalized relationship with the customer.
• Efficient use of resources - PowerCenter reduces labor and training costs by eliminating the need for extensive manual SQL coding. Polo’s centralized enterprise data-management architecture simplifies its larger information-management infrastructure, providing optimal cost of ownership.