The business encompasses an international group of local food retail and foodservice operators that do business under their own brand names in the US and Europe.
Ahold aims to be the leading food provider in those markets in which it chooses to operate. This mission will be delivered by a focused company with common goals and shared values. At all levels of the company, Ahold wants to "think customer" and move closer to its customers' needs. The company wants to focus on attracting customers and improving competitiveness in all markets.

When Ahold acquired Superdiplo in Spain there was no access to consolidated business data due to the constraints imposed by the use of several different information systems architectures. In order to pursue business growth and have accurate margin analysis and efficient negotiation, the access to this information was critical, so the client could not wait for the unification of the operational systems. The solution was the creation of a unified Data Warehouse, which involved the implementation by Enabler of Retek (now Oracle Retail) Data Warehouse with customisation so that it could work independently of Retek Merchandising System.

Enabler created a management application based on central item codes, data integration interfaces from the operational systems into the data warehouse, a translation layer for item and supplier codes between the data migration layer and standard data processing into the data marts.

"The implementation of RDW has enabled, within a short period of time, the access to company-wide critical business indicators through the implementation of a packaged Data Warehouse. The data model used was completely adapted to the retail business. All this was translated into not just more, but better competitive information which added value to the business management", said Miguel Angel Nieto, Ahold Project Manager.

www.ahold.com