eircom net selects Similarity Systems

Dateline: 16 September 2003

eircom net, Ireland’s leading Internet service provider (ISP), has implemented Similarity Systems’ ATHANOR™ to improve data quality within the organization and to successfully complete a major data migration project. ATHANOR enabled eircom net to deliver high quality data to a new order management system, reducing overall project risk and implementation time.

Like many ISP’s eircom net had grown rapidly in recent years and had acquired a number of different product, customer and billing databases. The new order management system was designed to provide its staff with access to all customer, product and billing information through a single user interface. Populating the system involved migrating data from multiple legacy customer and product databases.

“We knew from the start that the effectiveness of the new order management system would largely depend on the quality of the source data, but with multiple data sources we couldn’t be sure what level of data quality we had,” said Sean Greenan, billing manager, eircom net. “ATHANOR’s powerful profiling functionality automated the analysis and mapping of data across all source databases before the information was loaded into the new order management system. This standardization of our data from different source databases to the new data schema was critical to the success of our new order management system.”

“Data migration projects continue to be hindered by data quality problems. Project over-runs far beyond allocated budget and time are experienced regularly as companies implement ERP, business intelligence and CRM systems. The initial analysis of data prior to migration is the most critical step in the process. Organizations who ignore this step discover major flaws in data too late, which can lead to extensive and expensive re-work, ” said Garry Moroney chief executive officer, Similarity Systems.

ATHANOR gives eircom net complete in-house control over its data cleansing and migration process, from assessing levels of data quality to building and implementing bespoke data quality plans and rules. ATHANOR easily handles data from multiple sources and can implement data quality business rules across the enterprise. The flexible software enables eircom net to monitor, test and modify every step of the migration process and the project team can re-use data quality plans, saving time and effort throughout the data migration process.

Delta Partners Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland