Case Study: The Beverage Company

This case study bases the database planning process on the needs of a fictitious company, The Beverage Company (TBC), as an example for how to build an Essbase database. TBC is a variation of the Sample.Basic application that is included with the Essbase installation.

TBC manufactures, markets, and distributes soft drink products internationally. Analysts at TBC prepare budget forecasts and compare performance to budget forecasts monthly. The financial measures that analysts track are profit, loss, and inventory.

TBC uses spreadsheet packages to prepare budget data and perform variance reporting. Because TBC plans and tracks a variety of products over several markets, the process of deriving and analyzing data is tedious. Last month, analysts spent most of their time entering and rekeying data and preparing reports.

TBC has determined that Essbase is the best tool for creating a centralized repository for financial data. The data repository will reside on a server that is accessible to analysts throughout the organization. Users can load data from various sources and retrieve data as needed. TBC has a variety of users, so TBC expects that different users will have different security levels for accessing data.