Success Story - Integrating OLAP and Advanced Reporting Capabilities into SumTotal's e-Learning Product
Background
SumTotal Systems, a leading provider of learning management solutions, has over 1,500 customers including six of the world’s ten biggest pharmaceutical makers, six of the ten largest automotive companies in the world, three of the world’s top five airlines, and five of the six largest US commercial banks.
SumTotal's original reporting system consisted of a small collection of basic queries that ran in real-time against the main production database. Unfortunately, this design had several problems:
SumTotal engaged LEX Software to evaluate various analytic options and approved our recommended project plan.
Project Summary
A team of LEX consultants led a larger team of SumTotal developers in architecting and developing the following:
Fast response time was a primary design goal because of the very large customer dimension and the tight data security requirements that had to be dynamically applied depending on whether the user was looking at his own e-learning plan or his subordinates plans.
Results
Upon launching the new version, SumTotal led the e-learning software industry with the most advanced and easy-to-use reporting and analysis system. Users could access any report in seconds, easily manipulate the report to change the layout or filters, and save the new report with an appropriate level of security access for others to use. Production transaction system users did not notice any slowdown while the data extract process was running because the extract process was specifically designed to have a small footprint.
SumTotal and LEX have continued to upgrade and enhance the reporting and analysis system since the initial launch.
