Pull data from database to generate XML files

I have the following script in Perl that does the following:

1. Prompts user for time in epoch. If user enters '########', the query will look for all reports generated after that date/time. If user does not input time, it will just look for all reports in past day.

2. Connects to a database, runs a query to receive reports

3. I create a directory of the current date (i.e. Jun25)

4. I iterate through every row in the results and I save the contents of the xml file into an actual file and name the file [customer name]-[epoch time].xml

I am trying to clean up my code and have it run more efficiently.

#!/usr/bin/perl

#use strict;
use DBI;
use File::Slurp;
use Encode;
use utf8;
use POSIX qw(strftime);
use File::Slurp;
use XML::XPath;
use XML::XPath::XMLParser;
$| = 1;
print "Please enter epoch time of which to receive reports or leave blank to receive last day of reports: ";
my $epoch = <STDIN>;
chomp($epoch);
if ($epoch =~ /\D/) {$epoch = time() - 86400}
###Start Database
my $dsn = join "", ( 
    "dbi:ODBC:",
    "Driver={SQL Server};",
    "Server=SERVER;",
    "Database=DATABASE",
);
my $user = q/USERNAME/;
my $password = q/PASSWORD/;

my $db_options = {
    PrintError => 1,
    RaiseError => 1,
    #LongTruncOk => 1,
    LongReadLen => 100000000, 
};

print "CONNECTING TO DATABASE...";
# Connect to the data source and get a handle for that connection.
my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $user, $password, $db_options)
    or die "Can't connect to $dsn: $DBI::errstr";
print "CONNECTED\nFETCHING ROWS AND PARSING...\n";

my $sql = "SELECT [receivedTime], [reportXml] from UsageReport WHERE [receivedTime] > " . $epoch . " AND [reportXml] NOT LIKE '%exclude%'";

# Prepare the statement.
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql)
     or die "Can't prepare statement: $DBI::errstr";

$sth->execute();
###End Database

#Make Directory of Current Date
$datestring = strftime "%b%d", localtime;
mkdir $datestring;
chdir $datestring;
# Fetch and display the result set value.
my @matrix;
my $count = 0;
while (my @row = $sth->fetchrow_array ) {
    my ($time, $report) = @row; #time, report
    $count++;
    eval {
        my $xp = XML::XPath->new(xml => $report);
        my $customer = $xp->getNodeText('/report/instances/instanceroot/instanceheader/customer');
        if ($customer eq "") {next;}
        our $ext = $customer . "-" . $time . ".xml";
        write_file($ext, $report);
    };
    if ( $@ ) {printf "ERROR ";}
    else {printf "$count ";}
}

# Disconnect the database from the database handle.
$dbh->disconnect;
print "\nCOMPLETED REPORT PARSING\nLatest Report Date: ";