Vectorwise empowers SaaS provider, Softwear BV, to offer retailers and wholesalers high-speed intuitive analytics
Customer Company Size
SME
Region
- Europe
Country
- Netherlands
Product
- Actian Vectorwise
Tech Stack
- HTML5
- Python
- MongoDB
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Applicable Industries
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
Softwear BV is a provider of SaaS-based solutions for fashion and apparel retailers and wholesalers in the Netherlands. Founded in 1988, the company helps 600 retailers and 120 wholesale companies run their ERP and POS systems and benefit from deep-dive analytic reporting to drive their business. As the only Dutch SaaS vendor in this market, Softwear focuses on the small to medium-sized market, with many of their customers having one or two shops in their portfolio. Their sweet spot is helping retailers that have fewer than twenty outlets and wholesalers with fewer than one hundred employees. Since 2002, Softwear’s entire portfolio of products, solutions, and services has been on-demand and hosted in the cloud. No data is on any customer’s hardware on their premises; instead, it is hosted in Softwear’s data centers. With its audience having no expertise in IT, Softwear offers training and help to get their customers started; in effect, Softwear serves as the IT department for its clients.
The Challenge
Softwear BV, a SaaS solution provider for retailers, was facing challenges with its legacy database system. The poor performance and functionality of the system were unable to meet the analytical needs of its customers. As the database tables grew from millions of records to potentially billions, the transactional-based database solution could not keep up with the analytic demands from the customers. Furthermore, Softwear wanted to streamline the applications and reduce the amount of hardware needed in its data centers. The company also aimed to offer the analytic reporting layer as a SaaS-based on-demand online solution.
The Solution
Softwear BV adopted Actian's Vectorwise for Windows as a SaaS-based application for fast, affordable on-demand BI and analytics. After an extensive period of testing, it became clear how different Vectorwise was in terms of increased query and analytic speeds and how both Softwear and its customer base could manipulate analytic reporting data. Once they had set up a process to bulk copy historical data from the company’s source systems into Vectorwise, they ran tests that showed how their legacy system first took 20 seconds to write a query and then 80 seconds to execute it – for data on one company with one outlet. And yet Vectorwise allowed the company to see all their customers’ data in just one database table and slice and dice the data in just milliseconds. Furthermore, with plans to grow their Vectorwise database to 10 billion line items, Softwear continues to test the database for scalability and sees no degradation in performance as it grows in size. Having developed an intuitive BI front-end themselves, Softwear’s customer base can manipulate their data and reports interactively, and given that it is offered via a SaaS solution, they can log on from anywhere and see their data and results including the ability to report and chart them with a few simple clicks of the finger or mouse.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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