Rapidly Growing Company Eliminates Business
Barriers, Boosts Revenue with Analytics Platform
Customer: Service Corporation
International
Website: www.sci-corp.com
Customer Size: 23,500 employees
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Professional services—Personal
services
Customer Profile
Service Corporation International is the
largest funeral and cemetery services
provider in North America.
Software and Services
 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Microsoft Analytics Platform System
 Technologies
− Microsoft SQL Server Integration
Services
− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
Reporting Services
 Hardware
- HP Converged System 300 for
Microsoft Analytics Platform System
For more information about other
Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
www.microsoft.com/customers
“With the insight we gain from the Microsoft Analytics
Platform System, we can really put the money where
we know we’re going to get the best growth. So from
my perspective, it’s opened the door for us to do
more.”
Michael Johnson, Managing Director of Strategic Pricing, SCI
Service Corporation International (SCI), a leading provider of
funeral and cemetery services, was experiencing rapid growth
but faced limitations with a data warehouse that no longer kept
up with its reporting needs. The company solved that problem
with the Microsoft Analytics Platform System (APS). With faster,
more accurate insight, the company has boosted revenue by up
to 35 percent in one of its business lines and is making more-
strategic decisions about development projects that power
future growth.
Faces BI bottlenecks driving some best practices from a
Service Corporation International is North strategic standpoint, but we weren’t
America’s largest provider of funeral and getting very good information, and we
cemetery services, with locations couldn’t leverage data in our old data
throughout the United States and Canada. warehouse environment,” says Michael
As the business grew rapidly, the company Johnson, Managing Director of Strategic
realized that it needed better insight into Pricing at SCI.
performance across its expanding network.
Data flowed to a central data warehouse
Over the last 10 years, the company had from multiple applications, including the
made great strides in standardizing company’s primary point-of-sale system
processes such as pricing strategies, but its that handles all contracts. Every night, the
technology hadn’t kept pace with its company ran batch processes to provide
business acumen. “We had centralized our daily and monthly reports for managers.
strategic pricing function and started However, running one job after another
was time-consuming, and data that should
have been delivered by 6:00 A.M. was often
delayed by three hours or more. The end-
of-month general ledger (GL) closing
process was a particularly big bottleneck,
taking up to five hours to complete while
other workloads waited.
But the slow extraction transform and load
(ETL) process wasn’t the only barrier to
accessing data. “Because we had
performance issues and because we had to
monitor the databases appropriately, we
never had the opportunity to provide tools
to end users so that they could do their own
analysis and reporting,” says Divek Passi,
Managing Director of IT Applications and
Integration at SCI. “We wanted to make sure
that the reports were running correctly, so
we did it for them.”
Gains better analytics
It was time to upgrade to a better business
intelligence (BI) solution, and SCI knew that
a traditional database environment wouldn’t
suffice. The company looked at multiple
products, including HANA from SAP, before
choosing the Microsoft Analytics Platform
System. “Microsoft APS fit our overall
approach, and the affordability and
capabilities as an appliance made sense for
us,” says Passi. “Also, I’ve been keeping my
eye on the progress of Microsoft in the BI
world, especially with tools like Power View,
and I thought that having the appliance
might help us move in that direction.”
The Microsoft Analytics Platform System,
includes preinstalled hardware, software,
and networking components that deliver
high levels of scalability and performance.
As a result, SCI can run multiple workloads
simultaneously, even while data is loading.
Working with SQL Server Integration
Services, SCI can pull together large
volumes of information from multiple
sources and load transaction-level datasets.
SCI is also using Power View, a feature of
SQL Server Reporting Services, to create
dashboards that can be launched by remote
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published May 2015
employees. Now, the company can work
easily with large volumes of data and
provide near-real-time insight to
management teams and field personnel,
who no longer have to wait for IT to create
reports. The result is a more proactive
workforce. Johnson says, “We can push a
set of analytics out to field managers that
capture trends, allowing them to identify
and mitigate profit leaks, and to maximize
revenue based on strategic pricing
decisions.”
Fuels revenue with insight
With the Microsoft Analytics Platform
System, SCI has gained faster, more
accurate insight into large volumes of
complex data. As a result, it is significantly
boosting revenue and making strategic
decisions that support future growth.
Boosts revenue 35 percent with BI
SCI has gained unprecedented analytics
capabilities, which in turn, have improved
its bottom line. For example, it runs a large
construction operation that includes up to
400 large projects each year. In the past,
the company was unable to get the BI it
wanted because queries took too long to
run. That changed with the new analytics
platform. “With APS, we began pulling in
transaction-level data that we’ve never had
before,” says Johnson. “We’ve completely
automated analytics for our construction
operations, from pro forma evaluation
through post-construction monitoring. As
a result, over the last two years we’ve seen
significant revenue improvement of up to
35 percent.”
Improves accuracy and decisions
With the new analytics platform, SCI is not
only processing data faster, it is also
improving accuracy and efficiency with
more automated processes. “The big
benefit is that it can all happen much more
quickly with APS,” says Johnson. “And we
have the ability to add tables, cleanse data
errors, and create queries that are
consistent across departments. We have
much better control and data quality, so
there’s no longer a question that it’s
correct. Now field leadership and executive
management know that what they’re
seeing is true and can make a better
decision.”
Transforms business management
Taking a closer look at performance
metrics underscores the business gains.
“One of the things we’re very excited
about is the improvements in our GL close
process,” says John Thokala, BI Solution
and Data Architecture Manager at SCI. “We
reduced hours of reporting time to less
than five minutes. And in another example,
a query that used to run for almost 18
hours now produces data in 12 minutes.”
Today, SCI is fueling future business
growth with its new analytics capabilities.
“Making data-oriented decisions releases
the shackles,” says Johnson. “With the
insight we gain from the Microsoft
Analytics Platform System, we can really
put the money where we know we’re
going to get the best growth. So from my
perspective, it’s opened the door for us to
do more.”
With more-detailed analytics, SCI can fine-
tune regional development across North
America. “For example, it’s enabled me to
make a case for cemetery development
projects, and we’ve increased our capital
and investment by 85 percent over the last
two-and-a-half years since we’ve moved to
this data-driven environment,” explains
Johnson. “We used to manage projects
based on the company’s overall metrics,
but now we manage all of our projects
based on location-specific datasets and
numbers. That obviously gives us a much
higher probability for success.”