Business Reporting
Successful transition from on-premises to cloud for Stonegate Pub Company
Project: change++ developed a new reporting environment for a cloud-based version of Stonegate’s existing on-premises finance system.
Services: Business Reporting.
Results: Working closely with all partners involved, change++ seamlessly integrated the reporting environment to the Azure cloud platform without compromising performance.
The client
Stonegate Pub Company was formed in 2010 and is now the largest pub company in the UK, operating around 4,800 managed, leased and tenanted pubs. The company operates a number of recognised pub brands including Slug & Lettuce, Yates’s, Be At One and Walkabout, and venues including Popworld and Fever.
Their needs
The Stonegate Pub Company wanted to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing for its finance systems and reporting. The business decided to migrate to a cloud version of its Coda Finance System (Coda v14) from the on-premises v13. This identified a requirement to develop a new reporting environment. Stonegate Finance was already using IBM Cognos Powercubes and the proposed solution would involve a new installation of IBM Cognos.
What we did
Cloud computing offers significant benefits over on-premises hosting and storage in terms of security, reliability and flexibility. It is also a much lower cost solution as businesses typically pay for what they use rather than the cost of maintaining their own hosted environment.
Like other businesses upgrading to cloud versions of software they use in daily operational systems, Stonegate Finance had multiple issues to consider, including how to transition from the traditional environment to the more specialist integration of an existing reporting solution.
Four stakeholders were involved in the project: Unit4 – the Coda vendor, the original environment hosting company, Centrality who provided Stonegate’s Azure cloud platform and, as Stonegate Finance’s BI partner, change++ to support the IBM Cognos reporting solution.
change++ had previously worked closely with Centrality on similar projects over the years and the partners were confident of delivering what Stonegate wanted.
From the outset, it was clear that the specialist nature of the IBM Cognos deployment within Stonegate would need close collaboration between Unit4, Centrality, and change++. To ensure that authentication between Cognos and Coda v14 databases would work, change++, Centrality, Unit4 and Stonegate held early-stage discussions and cooperated closely in order to clarify issues and concerns, and test assumptions.
Centrality provisioned the Azure Virtual Machines while change++ created the new Cognos environment, installing and configuring the software and handling the migration.
“The Azure cloud platform has seen no compromises in terms of performance or capability. The Cognos IBM content was integrated seamlessly thanks to all parties working together. It’s been a successful project.”
- Steve Rix, Project Manager, Stonegate Pub Company
The results
Stonegate Pub Company’s Finance team now has a completely updated software solution, underpinned by scalable cloud services for future-proof onward development and growth. The company’s financial reporting, which was identified as a key requirement of the new system, was seamlessly integrated into the Azure cloud environment, without any compromises in terms of performance or capability.
Benefits include:
- A completely updated software solution underpinned by scalable cloud services
- Seamless integration of the Cognos IBM content
- A future-proof solution delivered on time and to the quoted budget
- Issues were considered and assumptions tested through close cooperation
- Zero authentication issues between Cognos and Coda v14 databases