Cimera is used within the IT Environment Services department. The supermarket has hundreds of test environments comprising tens of thousands of hardware and software components with complex relationships.

Test environments were previously managed using a number of disparate spreadsheets with inconsistent and duplicated information. Workflow was managed by email.

Cimera now manages demand, scheduling and provisioning of the test environments as well as controlling the components within a test environment, the inter-dependencies and any associated changes.

Cimera also manages workflow between teams in respect of work requests and incidents making sure that the right people are involved at the right time.

Cimera provides instant status reporting and fast impact analysis of changes and failures.

Key processes have been reduced from hours to minutes and errors have been reduced.

Cimera is used within the IT department to control Release Management in a heterogeneous SAP environment.

Key data was previously stored in complex spreadsheets and workflow was managed via email. A lack of accessible information and audit meant any issues took far too long to diagnose and resolve on a £4m/month migration project.

Cimera now manages application builds, their inter-dependencies and the composition of testing environments.

Cimera is used to efficiently manage the deployment request and approval process ensuring that the state of all testing environments is fully understood and authorised as well as highlighting inconsistent configurations.

Cimera integrates with Quality Centre allowing application builds to be related to testing defects and fixes.

Cimera’s audit history proves invaluable during problem diagnosis in understanding what combinations of application versions were present in an environment at any given time.

Part of Cimera’s initial appeal was that it could be installed and configured to align with existing processes in days not months.

Cimera is used to manage the back-office processes that were previously controlled via a combination of  spreadsheets, documents, emails and folders of paper receipts and invoices.

Cimera controls all financial data (invoices, orders, petty cash, till records, HMRC information and expenses) as well as supplier, staff and stock information.

Cimera’s security and audit provide the necessary controls in an environment that is staffed by an often transient and casual workforce. Cimera’s rules and workflow ensure processes are consistently followed and adhered to.

Key financial information is extracted as a complete dataset for the external accountants. Returned accounting data is automatically uploaded into Cimera.
 
Managers now have instant access to up-to-date and accurate financial and KPI information.