Background Smiffy’s is a long-established fancy dress company, founded in 1894, the oldest and largest family-owned fancy dress company in the world. The fun element of the offering masks a complex business with over 7,000 products in its portfolio. Its 5,000 customers are spread across 40 countries and it employs 200 people. Keeping this enterprise reliable for next-day delivery and fully compliant is no small task. Chris Smith, business analyst at Smiffy’s, returned to the company for his second stint after moving back to the UK, to find that not a lot had changed – and in the IT world that was bad news. Challenges Smith began his second stint at the business four years ago and found that its business intelligence implementation was in roughly the same state as it had been when

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