Virgin Megastores Decrease Fraud with BizTalk Server 2004

Whenever I'm talking to customers about business process re-engineering, I'm always looking for new ways to demonstrate the genuine business value that can be generated using current technologies, like Microsoft BizTalk(r) Server 2004. I find that it helps if you can provide an example of how other companies have used the technology and then attempt to translate that reference into something meaningful for the customer I am with.

This case study from Virgin in the UK has been one of my favourite examples for a while.

"New tools for best-of-breed integration and business process management solutions from Microsoft allow loss prevention managers at Virgin Megastores to uncover, analyze and react in real time to fraudulent activities. The sweet sound of reducing inventory loss across its stores in North America, Europe and Japan – a battle that costs the entire industry $30 billion a year – now resonates at Virgin with Microsoft’s new BizTalk Server 2004. The BizTalk Server 2004 integration solution enables customers to manage and automate their business processes and provide tools to design, deploy and monitor these processes in real time.

"In just the first month, the BizTalk Server 2004 loss prevention management solution detected 50 percent more potential fraud cases, and is much faster, than our previous solution," says Steven Winningham, senior vice president of operations and IT at Virgin Entertainment Group."

The Microsoft case study has a lot more information here.

Comments

How about this article explaining that BizTalk has finally crossed the chasm in Australia?

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=730101265&eid=-500

As per my model about Microsoft partners and new technologies in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle...now that BizTalk is crossing the chasm all the larger SIs are getting into the game...

Cheers to all the people at MS Australia who made it happen (many of these have now moved on :-) ) !!!