Introduction
Smith & Williamson is an independently owned professional and financial services group, employing more than 1,500 people and managing £16 billion in investments. As one of the UK’s top ten accountancy firms, the business depends on accurate, timely data to support advisory services, compliance and decision making. To modernise reporting and move workloads off a legacy COBOL platform, Smith & Williamson partnered with WhereScape to automate data warehouse development and establish a trusted analytics foundation.
Pre-WhereScape Challenges
- Legacy reporting constraints: Business data was sourced from a UNIX-based COBOL system that was difficult to query.
- Slow delivery cycles: Report requests required new COBOL programs, often taking weeks to deliver.
- Fragmented analytics: Excel spreadsheets and Access databases duplicated effort and produced inconsistent results.
- Limited BI capability: Legacy systems restricted the use of modern business intelligence tools.
- Modernisation pressure: Reporting needed to move off the legacy platform without risking accuracy or delivery.
Why WhereScape?
Smith & Williamson needed a data warehouse solution that could rapidly extract and transform data from legacy systems while delivering trust, accuracy and flexibility. WhereScape RED offered full lifecycle automation, from design and build to operation; allowing the IT team to deliver BI faster, reduce risk and modernise reporting without lengthy hand-coded development.
“I had only recently returned to the company, so I couldn’t have risked recommending a solution unless I was 100% confident in its ability to deliver.”
– David Rutherford, Head of Application and Data Architecture, Smith & Williamson
The Solution
Automated Data Warehouse Build
WhereScape RED automated the design, development and operation of a new data warehouse that pulled data from the legacy COBOL environment and transformed it into a standard business model.
Rapid Pilot Delivery
A four-week pilot successfully replicated an existing overnight extract in just three weeks, while simultaneously generating more granular data for deeper analysis.
Enhanced Analytics Capability
An OLAP cube was built on top of the warehouse, enabling drill-down analysis through familiar tools such as Excel.
Fully Documented Architecture
WhereScape automatically generated metadata, lineage and documentation: supporting governance, auditability and trust in the data.
“WhereScape RED is clearly the best and most cost effective solution in this space for what we needed.”
– David Rutherford, Head of Application and Data Architecture, Smith & Williamson
Results
🚀 Dramatically Faster Delivery
- Reports delivered in three weeks instead of several months.
- Interactive development replaced long specification cycles.
- Faster response to business reporting requests.
🚀 Improved Data Trust
- Single, centralized source of trusted data established.
- Clear lineage and traceability across transformations.
- Data quality issues identified and addressed early.
🚀 More Powerful Business Insight
- Granular data supports deeper analysis.
- OLAP cubes enable drill-down by client, country and risk profile.
- Business users gain faster access to insight through BI tools.
“Through interactive development, WhereScape delivered in three weeks what we estimate would have taken several months using a traditional approach with hand crafted code.”
– David Rutherford, Head of Application and Data Architecture, Smith & Williamson
Breaking Free From Legacy Constraints
By abstracting data from the COBOL platform into a modern warehouse, Smith & Williamson unlocked analytics capabilities that were previously out of reach, all without disrupting core systems.
From Fragmentation to Consistency
Replacing dozens of bespoke spreadsheets with a centralised warehouse eliminated inconsistencies and reduced duplicated effort across teams.
Accelerating Business Engagement
As trust in the data increased, business users began actively requesting new insights and analytics: driving wider adoption and value.
A Platform for Ongoing Transformation
The data warehouse now serves as a foundational component of Smith & Williamson’s broader systems and data architecture strategy, supporting future applications and reporting needs.
“With WhereScape, the whole reporting process was far more efficient and accurate than our previous model. This allowed us to get business insights faster.”
– David Rutherford, Head of Application and Data Architecture, Smith & Williamson
