UDS, however, continued to manage many of its retail sales systems, operational business units, external market sources and budget applications in non-SAP environments. In order to successfully link the two environments and provide its users with centralized access to enterprise data, UDS implemented Informatica PowerCenter.

"To supply our sales, marketing and financial decision-makers with an accurate and comprehensive view of our business, we had to have access to intelligence residing outside of our SAP solutions," said Doris Beaulieu, chief information officer at Ultramar Diamond Shamrock. "PowerCenter’s certified interface to SAP BW provided us with this capability, and eliminated the need for additional coding which resulted in lower training costs and faster deployment."

Today, sales, marketing and finance employees across UDS access the enterprise data warehouse to provide consistent and integrated information to all levels of the company. UDS has experienced a number of significant benefits from implementing an enterprise data warehouse that have helped the company stay competitive and continue to grow its business:

• Substantial return on investment. UDS believes that its investment in data warehousing was a key factor in increasing its sales and entering new markets.
• Increased market share. With greater insight into its sales data and customer channels, UDS is able to better identify regional and national trends in the petroleum marketplace.
• Increased receivables through contract fulfillment. Daily updating of sales invoices permits sales managers to better monitor contract fulfillment, increasing overall profitability.
• Maximized realization of sales. Daily updates of regional petroleum market prices instantly empower sales reps to strategically price their petroleum products for optimal sales performance.
• Faster access to more data. Implementing automated data-integration technologies helped UDS unlock data from R/3 and integrate it with non-SAP data immediately after going into production with its data warehouse.
• Greater use of strategic analysis across UDS to drive business decisions. By creating a singular point of reference for all sales-analysis and accounting statements, end-users can now make decisions with confidence in the accuracy and integrity of data.

"PowerCenter’s flexibility helped successfully bridge the gap between our SAP and non-SAP data, providing a comprehensive window into the business for our decision makers," said Beaulieu. "The pairing of SAP BW with Informatica resulted in a powerful analytic architecture that has become mission-critical to the continued success of our business."

Ultramar Diamond Shamrock Corp. is one of the largest independent refining and marketing companies in North America. The company operates seven refineries throughout the United States and Canada, and has over 5,000 branded retail gasoline/convenience merchandise stores, the majority of which are branded Diamond Shamrock, Ultramar, Beacon or Total. The company sells its petroleum products to retail consumers, commercial end users, resellers, utilities and the United States military.