NZ Post sees its data future with Oracle

By ADAM GIFFORD

New Zealand Post has picked Oracle to build what is expected to be one of the country's largest data warehouses.

Phase one of the project, due to go live in May, will bring together marketing, sales and billing information from NZ Post's letters business unit. The courier and retail businesses will be brought in later.

The selection of Oracle follows more than a year of consulting work by data warehousing specialist Teradata. NZ Post national marketing manager Graham Smith said the company wanted to get a better understanding of customer behaviour which it could use to launch new products and expand into emerging markets.

"One of problems we have in marketing is data is held in disparate systems.

"It consolidates from a financial perspective but it is difficult to get a single view of the customer," Smith said.

"We have a huge customer base of small businesses who have been anonymous to us."

He said one reason for picking Oracle over Teradata for the "seven figure" system was that NZ Post already had expertise in Oracle technology.

It uses Oracle databases for its main line of business applications, including the Peoplesoft financial package it is installing.

NZ Post chief information officer Nigel Prince said other reasons for choosing Oracle included ease of integration, open standards, total cost of ownership, and the accessibility of Oracle's professional services staff.

Teradata Asia Pacific manager Julian Beavis said Teradata's consulting wasn't tied in with selling a system, but was to help NZ Post assess whether a data warehouse was relevant to its business.

"We get credibility out of doing these projects, even if one or two do not end up with us installing systems," Beavis said.