McDougall Energy

The company

McDougall Energy Inc. (“McDougall Energy” or “MEI”) is a Canadian, privately owned energy company, which has been serving customers for over 70 years in three distinct markets: home, auto, and business. MEI is a marketer and distributor of heating oil, propane, gasoline, diesel fuel and commercial lubricants, as well as an Esso retailer. MEI is proud to have been named one of Canada’s Best Managed Companies for six years in a row. Now in its third generation of ownership, the energy company serves communities across various regions in Canada.

Project Scope

• Apply ETL strategies to transform, map and replicate data from ERP system within and between in-house and host servers.
• Real-time data to support for 30,000+ customer portal user base and 300+ employee base

Project Challenges

• Replicating mass amounts of data between an in-house server and a host server to be used for all customers who view and report on the customer portal.
• Replicate, map and filter details from ERP system to financial databases and customer portal database while still accessing various data.
• With an IT staff of eight, a quick, simple and effective ETL tool with a modest learning curve was required

Background

McDougall Energy Inc. replicates accurate data in real-time, which is necessary for allowing customers to use the on-demand reporting tool on the portal and ensuring they have up-to-date data. MEI also needed a simple way to filter and map tables and data. Using MSSQL replication, MEI was limited and required in-house code to further support the replication and its minimal features. Furthermore, with the need for the web portal to be up and running by a strict deadline, MEI required a solution that could be implemented in a short span of time.

MEI needed to find a quicker, more efficient management software tool to replace the current MSSQL Replication solution used to replicate from an ERP systems database to a web portal database. As Dan Austin, Senior Programmer Analyst commented, “Instead of using SQL Replication and having to battle with unknown errors with little to no support we need a better solution. And with such a small team let’s reduce our time re-inventing the wheel and find something that works.”

Why Syniti Was Selected

• Easy creation of replications
• Simple transform and mapping of fields
• Ability to apply own code via VB or C# script and import of references
• Solution versatility
• Detailed software documentation

Implementation Highlights

• Rolled out Customer Portal V2 for all Business Wheel-to-Wheel customers, allowing quick and accurate access to data and –real-time reporting
• Majority of solution implemented in one hour after installation
• Syniti’s team of experts drove a stream-lined implementation process, including installation, configuration of source and target databases as well as mapping between them
• Reduction in required MEI resources
• Minimal management required after go-live

Results

Today, Syniti is serving MEI’s purpose of replicating, transforming and  mapping to the web based customer portal and other internal databases. With the customer portal live, customers are now able to view, organize and report on their account details efficiently and accurately. Members of the team are proficient with the tool and are able to create additional scripts for replications to add more functionality and logging. The MEI team is now able to process approximately 350,000 records daily without any issues. Also, with the help of Syniti, they scaled the volume of tables that were replicated from servers from 10 to over 300.

As Mitch Robb, Applications Delivery Manager commented, “Syniti provided the functionality we were looking for and has the flexibility to provide any functionality we may need in the future.”