Description
Business Intelligence is the processes, technologies, and tools that help us change data into information, information into knowledge and knowledge into plans that guide organization to succeed, Technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing and providing access to data to help enterprise users to make better business Decisions.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
http://www.ijmra.us
84
May
2012
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR COMPETENCE IN
CONSUMER PACKAGED GOOD INDUSTRY
C. S. RAMANIGOPAL*
G. PALANIAPPAN**
A. MANI***
__________________________________________________________
Abstract:
In today‘s struggling economy with competition controlling and shrinking the landscape, it is
important to make sound business decisions based on complete data. With the proper Business
Intelligent implementation, businesses can make decisions and feel comfortable that they are
provided with the proper tools and data needed to believe in their decisions. Business
Intelligence is the processes, technologies, and tools that help us change data into information,
information into knowledge and knowledge into plans that guide organization to succeed,
Technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing and providing access to data to help enterprise
users to make better business Decisions. The duty of the system is to ensure that correct decision
is taken with the available data at the appropriate time according to the environment. The
relationship between BI and an organization that uses it is that an organization collectively is a
cognitive system: it senses the environment, makes a representation of it, acts on the basis of the
representation and learns from the results of its actions, storing its experience as institutional
memory. This study explores the opportunities of BI in Consumer Packaged Goods Industry.
Keywords: Business Intelligence, System, Cognitive, Performance, Information, Knowledge,
Environment, Decision, Strategies, Consumer, Packaged Goods.
* Professor – Management Studies, Vinayaka Missions University, Salem -636 308.
** Assistant Professor – Management Studies, Vinayaka Missions University, Salem -636 308.
*** Assistant Professor – Management Studies, VMKV Engineering College, Salem -636 308.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
http://www.ijmra.us
85
May
2012
Introduction:
Business Intelligence is the processes, technologies, and tools that help us change data into
information, information into knowledge and knowledge into plans that guide organization
Technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing and providing access to data to help enterprise
users to make better business Decisions. The characteristics of a Business intelligence solution
are Single point of access to information, Timely answers to Business questions, Using BI in the
entire organization. Business intelligence systems can help companies to have a more
comprehensive knowledge of the factors affecting their business, such as metrics on sales,
production, internal operations, and they can help companies to make better business decisions
according to the nature of any Business. Business Intelligence should not be confused
with competitive intelligence, which is a separate management concept.
Business intelligence systems are excellent for the modern business as it has the capacity to
ensure smooth, incessant flow of information without negotiating on security. The duty of the
system is to ensure that correct decision is taken with the available data at the appropriate time. It
greatly reduces the distribution costs spent on the information as well as the handling time. This
is done based on the information provided. It is basically used to enrich the timeliness of
information necessary for the organization. It should facilitate the tracking of changes, recording
and quick response thereby steering the organization to its objectives. And also should facilitate
planning and forecasting.
Technically stating, Business intelligence (BI) is commonly considered to be "the knowledge
gained about a business through the use of various tools and technologies which enable
organizations to turn data into information." The link between BI and an organization that uses it
is that an organization collectively is a cognitive system: it senses the environment, makes a
representation of it, acts on the basis of the representation and learns from the results of its
actions, storing its experience as institutional memory. BI technologies provide historical, current
and predictive views of business operations. Business intelligence aims to support better business
decision-making. Thus a BI system can be called a decision support system (DSS). Though the
term business intelligence is sometimes used as a synonym for competitive intelligence, because
they both support decision making, Business intelligence understood broadly can include the
subset of competitive intelligence. Business intelligence applications have made an impact on
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
http://www.ijmra.us
86
May
2012
organizations around the world, enabling companies to have more insight into their business than
ever before. The mix of enterprise reporting with business intelligence made possible to acquire
true competence from obtaining and sharing business information in Consumer Packaged Goods
Industry.
If business competes in the Consumer Packaged Goods industry, it faces the constant challenge
of juggling expanding product portfolios, managing multifaceted supply chain with distinct
service requirements and ensuring compliance with strict regulations and reporting requirements.
The consumer packaged goods industry is reliant on accurate, timely market research, effective,
targeted marketing campaigns and an efficient distribution network and sales force to execute the
enterprise strategy and achieve targets and plans. Today‘s global competition adds a complex
component to the consumer packaged goods market with increased consolidation and
competition in trade, new growth opportunities and sales channels, and critical necessity for
efficient supply chain and cost optimization. To compete in this environment, the consumer
packaged goods organisation must establish and leverage a powerful combination of technology,
business intelligence and results management and deliver quality and value with every shipment
and for every customer.
Historical:
In an article, IBM researcher used the term business intelligence. He defined intelligence as: "the
ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action
towards a desired goal." Business intelligence as it is understood today is said to have evolved
from the decision support systems which began in the 1960s and developed throughout the mid-
1980s. DSS originated in the computer-aided models created to assist with decision making and
planning. In 1989, Howard Dresner (later a Gartner Group analyst) proposed "business
intelligence" as an umbrella term to describe "concepts and methods to improve business
decision making by using fact-based support systems. It was not until the late 1990s that this
usage was widespread.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
http://www.ijmra.us
87
May
2012
Need of BI:
In today‘s struggling economy with competition controlling and shrinking the landscape, it is
important to make sound business decisions based on complete data. With the proper Business
Intelligent implementation, businesses can make decisions and feel comfortable that they are
provided with the proper tools and data needed to believe in their decisions. Without the correct
Business Intelligence solution even well planned and executed data warehouse architectures can
fail. Business Intelligence can provide professionals with the information they need to make the
most effective decisions for their organization. It also provides data about the organizations
details, such as customers, products, and services. Honestly when one can access this
information rapidly and easily in order to take appropriate action or make the right decision
business success is realized.
Objectives of Implementing BI in organization:
Objectives are the business benefits that an organization expects to achieve as a result of
spending time and exerting effort to complete a business intelligence project. Business
Intelligence solutions exist to provide the people within a company with the information
necessary to make the best decisions possible. Improved business decisions should increase
revenues, decrease costs and mitigate risk.
Benefits of Business Intelligence:
BI Improve operational efficiency, eliminate report backlog and delays, find root causes and take
action, negotiate better contracts with suppliers and customers, Identify wasted resources, reduce
inventory costs, sell information to stakeholders, leverage investment, improve strategies with
better marketing analysis, provides better decisions and also challenges against assumptions
with factual information. Some issues still need consideration, though increased efficiency and
extraction of clear information from complex data can improve and reduce the need for data
analyst and improve revenues, determine the exact return on an organizations investment in
Business Intelligence systems can be difficult.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
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May
2012
Business Intelligence can be applied to the following business purposes (MARCKM), in order to
drive business value:
Measurement – program that creates a hierarchy of performance
metrics and benchmarking that informs business leaders about progress towards business
goals.
Analytics – program that builds quantitative processes for a business to arrive at optimal
decisions and to perform Business Knowledge Discovery.
Reporting/Enterprise Reporting – program that builds infrastructure for Strategic
Reporting to serve the Strategic management of a business, NOT Operational Reporting.
Collaboration/Collaboration platform – program that gets different areas both inside and
outside the business to work together.
Knowledge Management – program to make the company data driven through strategies
and practices to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and
experiences that are true business knowledge.
Features of Business Intelligence:
The business intelligence solutions should be contemplated carefully, and the system opted for
should prove to be consistent. Even if add new data or new systems, or bring about major
changes, business intelligence systems have to steer the company to success. Steering to
accomplishment is done by integrating the new data with the existing business intelligence
systems is one of the significant elements of this intelligence solution. Creating or developing
data warehouses consume time, money and energy, whereas creating the data marts are effective.
However, ensure that it contains one data within the organization. Business intelligence needs
suitable analytical tools to assist in gathering information. It categorizes the collected data and
this categorization involves data extraction, conversion and cleansing process. Employing
suitable tools can restore order quickly. The next procedure is to analyze all the stored data to
assist in making decisions. To use the tools properly, users should learn to navigate it through the
systems. Similarly, selecting right tools is necessary to produce perfect results. The elements of
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
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89
May
2012
the business intelligence solutions should be considered as well as the organization requirements
should be determined prior to fitting a business intelligence system.
Importance:
Business Intelligence applications and technologies can enable organizations to make more
informed business decisions, and they may give a company a competence to succeed. Any
organization could use business intelligence applications or technologies to extrapolate
information from indicators in the external environment and forecast the future trends in their
sector. Business intelligence is used to improve the timeliness and quality of information, and
enable managers to be able to better understand the position of their firm as in comparison to its
competitors. Business intelligence applications and technologies can help companies to analyze
changing trends in market share; changes in customer behavior and spending patterns;
customers‘ preferences; company capabilities; and market conditions and may business to
business. Business intelligence can be used to help analysts and managers determine which
adjustments are most likely to respond to changing trends.
Business intelligence applications can enhance communication among departments, coordinate
activities, and enable companies to respond more quickly to changes. When a BI system is well-
designed and properly integrated into a company‘s processes and decision-making process, it
may be able to improve a company‘s performance. Having access to timely and accurate
information is an important resource for a company, which can expedite decision-making and
improve customers‘ experience.
In the competitive customer-service sector, companies need to have accurate, up-to-date
information on customer preferences, so that the company can quickly adapt to their changing
demands. Business Intelligence enables companies to gather information on the trends in the
marketplace and come up with innovative products or services in anticipation of customer‘s
changing demands. Business Intelligence applications can also help managers to be better
informed about actions that a company‘s competitors are taking. As well, BI can help companies
to share selected strategic information with business partners. Some businesses use BI systems to
share information with their suppliers (e.g., inventory levels, performance metrics, and other
supply chain data). BI systems can also be designed to provide managers with information on the
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
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90
May
2012
state of economic trends or marketplace factors, or to provide managers with in depth knowledge
about the internal operations of a business.
Tools and Its Nature:
Many companies are seeking a business intelligence tool that can deliver superior information
quickly and effectively. Competitive companies know that it's not enough to have great
information, have to be able to get it to the people who need it before it loses its value. The
quality of business intelligence — or the data that reveals "why" an organization is performing
the way it is — is often dependent on the quality of the BI tool used to collect, analyze and
deliver it. Inadequate solutions that are difficult to use or that can't unify intelligence gathering
throughout the business will face resistance from users and fail to achieve their potential. A
superior tool, on the other hand, will be quickly adopted across the organization because it offers
immediate value.
Business Intelligence Tools allow users to interrogate data from multiple sources, in any
dimension, in order to understand how a business is performing against certain key performance
metrics. Whilst that sounds simplistic in theory, it is not that easy in practice, because data often
resides in different systems, is stored in different formats, is subject to differing reporting time
periods, and so on. Business Intelligence Tools are designed to make that process of retrieving
the data, analysing it and reporting it, much simpler than it would otherwise be, so that users can
spend their valuable time interpreting results rather than wasting their time trying to compile the
data.
Opportunities:
If we think of business intelligence (BI) as business information and business analysis in support
of fact-based decisions in the context of business processes that impact profits, it quickly
becomes clear that business intelligence is a broad concept. The nature of business information
varies along a number of dimensions, including whether the business information:
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
http://www.ijmra.us
91
May
2012
Is about current business transactions and status or about transactions that occurred and
were closed out in prior months or years.
Is about the enterprise as a whole or about subunits of the organization such as strategic
business units or functional departments.
Is about the company or about other entities in the value chain, such as customers and
suppliers.
Is generated by a company‘s internal information systems or whether it is obtained from
external sources such as market research firms.
Is used for management processes, revenue generating processes, or operating processes.
Is detailed transactional information or summarized information about many transactions.
Is intended to be directly accessed by end users or whether it exists as input to
simulations and models.
Is intended for power users, general users, or executives.
Is intended for broad distribution or for more limited role-based use.
Factors to Avoid Failure:
BI is not just a technology, and not just a methodology. It‘s a powerful new management
approach that – when done right – can deliver knowledge, efficiency, better decisions, and profit
to almost any organization that uses it. When BI first came on the scene, it promised a lot but
often failed to deliver. The missing element was the business-centric focus explained in the profit
Impact of Business Intelligence. Business Intelligence shows step by step how can achieve the
promise of BI by connecting it to organization‘s strategic goals, culture, and strengths while
correcting BI weaknesses. It means business centric focus of BI can eliminate failure at the
maximum.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
http://www.ijmra.us
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May
2012
Challenges, Issues and Limitations:
Getting the right business intelligence (B.I.) solution in place is becoming increasingly critical to
the success of a business enterprise. Given the current economic crisis it has become more and
more important to capitalize on every possible opportunity and there‘s no better place to start
than squeezing the most value out of the data hold within organization. Businesses, as known,
rarely work at the speed of a report team—information is critical at the specific point in time it is
needed and without the assistance of a crystal ball, is not always known when that is going to be.
To be successful, businesses have to be able to give the people who need the information the
ability to access that data when needed, and on intuitive tools that they don‘t have to be experts
on, Which can be compromised only with help of efficient Business intelligence environment.
Though the demand for Business Intelligence tool is growing at a rapid pace there is still
criticism from the marketplace that the programs are to complex and difficult to use. User
resistance will be one of the biggest hurdles for suppliers of Business Intelligence providers to
overcome. Another potential problem is the Business Intelligence tools themselves. The
applications may be more user friendly than they used to be, the core use of Business
Intelligence is still reporting data rather than process management, though that is slowly starting
to change. Business Intelligence users must careful not to mistake business intelligence with
business analytics.
Business Intelligence Issues:
Key business intelligence issues facing today can be divided into two categories –
? Issues through Organizations and People
? Issues through Technology
Issues found in both categories are:
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
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May
2012
Issues through Organizations and People:
1) Management within an organisation are not convinced that data driven or evidence based
decisions really works for them. They prefer to run the operation from instinct.
2) There is no clear overall business strategy laid out with objectives and measures related to
those objectives to assess business progress.
3) IT personnel are overloaded and have no resource available to source the data need for
Business Intelligence (BI) system.
4) There are no incentives for the staff within organisation to improve the performance of the
business either using BI or not.
5) The business is in a state of stress or high change or flux. There is no apparent or perceived
time to establish a BI system.
6) The eventual consumers of the BI system do not really know what they want from a BI system
until they see it. This means lots of changes are required to the solution before it is accepted.
7) IT experts building the system do not really understand the business, and so many changes are
needed to have the system accepted by the organisation.
8) The company does not have sufficient expertise or is not able to hire such expertise to manage
a project implementation on time and within budget or to design the system adequately.
Issues through Technology:
1) The data of the organisation is not clean and the time and effort to correct this or handle this,
destroys the success of the BI project.
2) The BI technology chosen turns out to be so rigid and painstaking to change that the takes too
long and costs too much to complete the project on time.
3) The BI technology used deters use of the system because:
The quality of the presentation or visualization of the information is poor or limited.
? The response times (speed) to present the data is too slow and not acceptable.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
http://www.ijmra.us
94
May
2012
? The flexibility to ask new questions of the BI technology is limited or too difficult or time
consuming to do for either the End Users or BI expert.
Limitation:
The primary limitation of BI implementation is cost, time consuming training, a wide Variety of
technology experts, Extensive system upgrade and maintenance, Movement of data between
disparate data source, Queries done out of BI systems can be cumbersome and time-consuming
to run for end users.
Business Intelligence Advantages:
Advantages of business intelligence that can help any organization increase profitability by
conveying BI system across the firm.
Authorize employees: If an organization allows uncomplicated data access to the user which
is easy to understand and evaluative, the employees can execute in various ways that can
indirectly improve performance and back the entire business plan. Business Intelligence
comprises healthy, lively business score registering, investigation, and reporting equipments
so that every employee across the firm can make faster and enhanced decisions.
Unite people to access data competently and successfully: The initiation of business
intelligence has made decision making a lot simpler. Opinion leaders can access and evaluate
data at any given point of time and place. The latest information is accessible on the users'
desktop or over the internet.
Simplify teamwork and allocation: Business intelligence and partnership expertise
enhances managerial efficiency. Firm incorporation of BI enables the employee to share data
in a security improved, administered web ambiance with the team members, clients, and
associates. They even have a centralized site to supervise their KPIs, access accounts,
evaluate information as well as share texts, and connect to pertinent subject matter.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
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95
May
2012
Convey business intelligence to the entire firm: BI backs the width of the firm's business
intelligence requirements. Premeditated planning is uncomplicated when familiar equipments
are used, data supervision is easier and expansion is more lucrative.
Examine and increase insight: The fully integrated Business Intelligence tools enable
employees to increase insight simply by utilizing well-known and accessible tools. When
data is obtained easily and people interact freely, they are better able to investigate and assess
information and then make knowledgeable, astute business plans.
Enhance association: Business Intelligence enhances association across the firm. Expressive
approach, pre-set goals, aims, supervising performance, and then making well-versed
decisions that assists the entire business plan is useful for the organization. Administrators
can now initiate accountability guidelines on a policy diagram and employees can line up
their goals with corporate goals.
Lessen training requirements: With Business Intelligence people can interconnect with
information they desire to access to. Using business tools that are common, easily accessible,
and extensively backed, reduce the training costs of the firm.
Transport refined investigation and reporting: Impressive scorecard practicality backed
by accounts diagrams, graphs and assessments, signifies that employees can voluntarily
follow key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with key business objectives. Accepting
and examining the association between KPIs and corporate goals can lead to better
comprehension of daily business performance, so that the firm can act on it faster.
Disadvantages:
Major Business Intelligence disadvantages are:
Piling of Historical Data: The major objective of Business intelligence system is to
stockpile past data about a firm's deals and reveal it in such a way that it permits
professionals in decision making. On the flip side, this information generally amounts to a
small portion of what the firms actually require to function, besides its restrained worth.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
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A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
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May
2012
While in other situations, the user may not have interest in historical data as many markets
that the company regulates are in frequent alteration.
Cost: Business intelligence at times can be a little too much for small as well as for medium
sized enterprises. The use of such system can be expensive for basic business transactions.
Complexity: Another disadvantage of BI could be its complexity in implementation of data.
It can be so intricate that it can make business techniques rigid to deal with. In the view of
such premise, many business experts have predicted that these intricacies can ultimately
throttle any business.
Muddling of commercial settings: Business Intelligence can cause commercial settings to
turn out to be much more muddled.
Limited use: Like all improved technologies, business intelligence was first established
keeping in consideration the buying competence of affluent firms. Even today BI system
cannot be afforded by most of the companies. Although, traders in the past few years have
started modifying their services towards medium and small sized industries, but the fact is
that many of such firms does not consider them to be highly essential, for its complexity.
Time of these systems, the BI system can create an existence of their own in the firm. It must
be Consuming Implementation: Many firms in today's fast paced industrial scenario are not
patient enough to wait for the execution of Business intelligence in their organization.
Hence, it becomes vital for the firms to give due thought to the business intelligence aspect.
Due to the intricacy understood by the firm that storing data in the business intelligence
system just for the sake of it does not increase its worth but results in vice versa effect.
Risks Involved:
Most common BI risks BI faces are as below
1. Selected BI tool doesn’t live up to the hype: Many project managers have been duped by
the silky smooth promises of BI sales team.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
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2012
2. Resistance to change: Most BI implementations will encounter some form of resistance
from people within designated user groups. This often occurs when the value and usefulness
of the project has not be clearly communicated.
3. Failing to account for change: The culture, environment and focus of any business will
change. Therefore, BI requirements, project scope/parameters, reporting needs, data models
and data sources will always be in a state of relative flux. Failing to account for these likely
(or practically inevitable) changes between the requirements gathering and implementation
phase of a BI project can lead to the introduction of a BI solution that fails to reflect true
business needs and is poorly aligned with organizational goals.
4. Poor data quality: Neglecting to adequately clean data and implement stringent data change
management policies, before going live, will culminate in disaster. Delivering meaningless
and inaccurate reports will damage the perception of the BI project (perhaps irreversibly).
5. User adoption is poor: A project manager‘s and BI team‘s worst nightmare: The ?go‘ button
is firmly pressed, but the only activity on the BI platform is the slow, depressing roll of cyber
tumbleweed.
6. Over promising and under-delivering: Promising reporting and analytics for all and then
delivering a handful of in actionable reports for a few will reduce user confidence in the
usefulness of the BI project and the likelihood of ongoing executive sponsorship.
7. Scope Creep: Even if follow the above advice, and develop a realistic delivery schedule,
things can still very easily and very quickly get out-of-hand.
8. Locking everything down from the beginning: Business priorities have changed but the
data collecting and the report types producing haven‘t.
9. Losing financial backing: For a multitude of reasons – some legitimate, some political –
project funding is cut.
10. Too many moving parts make it hard to access information and attain insight: Many BI
tools are made up of different applications and components to satisfy both reporting and
analysis necessities. Navigating between these modules can be cumbersome and restrictive,
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
http://www.ijmra.us
98
May
2012
particularly for non-technical business users. The result? User abandonment and a missed
opportunity.
Critical success factors, in BI projects:
BI projects are quite complex. If an organization has not nurtured cross-organizational culture, it
is very difficult to implement a successful BI project. Many organizations are already well
equipped to implement successful applications. Some common Critical Success factors are
1. Inappropriate project team structure and dynamics.
2. Ineffective project management (only project administration)
3. Lack of recognizing BI projects as cross-organizational business initiatives and not
understanding that cross-organizational initiatives are different from stand-alone
solutions and also Lack of skilled and available staff as well as suboptimum staff
utilization.
4. Lack of understanding of the complexity of BI projects.
5. No appreciation of the impact of dirty data on business profitability.
6. No business analysis and no standardization activities.
7. No software release concept (no iterative development method) and No understanding of
the necessity for and the usage of meta data.
8. No work breakdown structure (no methodology)
9. Too much reliance on disparate methods and tools
10. Unavailable or unwilling business representatives and also Unengaged business sponsors
or business sponsors who have little or no authority due to their low-level positions
within the organization.
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Key Success Indicators:
Key Performance Indicators are also known as Key Success Indicators, they help an organization
to better define and measure their progress toward professional goals. Once an organization has
clearly identified its need, analyzed its mission, and defined its goals it will need a way to
measure the progress toward those goals. Key Performance indicators are those measurements.
These indicators are measurements agreed upon before hand that reflect the critical success
factors of a business or organization. They differ depending on the business, the business may
decide to appoint the percentage of its income that comes from returning customers as a Key
Performance Indicator, or a college may use the rate of students that meet graduations
requirements as a Key Performance Indicator. No matter what Key Performance Indicators are
selected they must reflect the business or organization goals. This means they must be ?key? or
directly related to its success and they must be measurable. It is also a proficient way to ensure
that a company is taking the correct steps toward realizing their goals for the organization‘s
success. When these indicators are set into place and used to measure what if any impact the
decisions made are having on that specific area, the organization can then fine tune the plan of
action and take the needed steps that will increase the success, profitability, or productivity of
that area.
Performers and Indicators in Consumer Packaged Goods Industry:
True business intelligence (BI) can support, grow and ensure the success of the consumer
packaged goods enterprise, and simplify the process of managing the competitive strategy, the
supply chain, product distribution and other critical business factors.
Financial and Operational Performance Management – Financial and Operational
Performance Management and Analysis enables financial performance and allows the
organisation to establish and meet goals and track progress using a large volume of
information, integrated from numerous enterprise systems and sources. Users can monitor the
financial health of the organisation and create and share reports to comply with government
and industry regulations
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Customer Profitability Management – Customer Profitability Management and Analysis
facilitates excellence in customer service and improves customer acquisition with targeted
marketing and market research. Users can identify the most profitable customers and analyse
buying behavior and preferences.
Profitability Management – Profitability Management and Analysis helps users to evaluate
the competition, the market, analyse risk trends and forecast profitability with dependable
data.
Sales, Marketing and Management –BI provides ample support to establish and manage
the results of marketing campaigns, market research, sales results and targets, individual
sales performance, regional and product sales performance and more.
Shipping and Distribution Channels – Team can monitor and analyse the efficiency of the
shipping and distribution network and its impact on customer satisfaction, inventory, sales and
other factors.
BI is designed to support all requirements and analytical needs including credit analysis for
student loans, regulatory compliance, operations management, loan monitoring, student and staff
performance, demographics, customer profiling and many other factors of business success.
BI for Consumer Packaged Goods – Benefits at a Glance
Highly scalable web-based architecture with role-based 24x7 accesses of information and
services in secure environment.
Assess all aspects of organisation performance, e.g., income, profit, customer satisfaction,
flexibility, transformation and growth
Balance the risk involved with business and growth while maintaining regulatory compliance
Ensure accurate, timely data for better insight into revenues and costs for confident decision
and maximized profitability and also Ensure regulatory compliance and provide accurate,
intuitive reporting
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Ensure accurate, up-to-date financial analysis and also Ensure an ideal combination of
technology, processes and people to optimize business strategy and cost and resource
allocation
Identify profitable partners and improve collaborative business processes. And Identify
redundancies, control costs and discover profitable growth opportunities
Improve customer relationship management with better understanding of their requirements
and Improve performance by integrating management and financial metrics
Leverage investments in existing resources and infrastructure by integrating data from
existing sources
Make timely informed decisions about business strategy and marketing tactics
Monitors, analyses and provides key performance indicators (KPIs) on sales by product,
region, distributor, partner, or sales representative using personalized BI dashboards and
intuitive business intelligence reports
Produce BI Reports for management on performance, customer demographics and other
factors
Provide a simple, intuitive interface that business users can leverage to perform tasks and
fulfill their prescribed role and also Provide an integrated view of market research, customer
feedback, new product planning, marketing campaigns, sales targets and results and trends
Provide capability to handle complex and large data elements in different data schemes
spread over a wide geographic distribution for risk recognition and trend analysis
Provide consistent operational and financial view across organisation to enforce
accountability and information sharing and also Provide true business intelligence to monitor
and analyse results, metrics, and strategic, operational and tactical performance.
Provides the support to eliminate the use of complex, error-ridden spreadsheets in favor of
highly intelligent BI dashboards and business intelligence reports with graphical and drill
down capability
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Receive automated alerts and take immediate corrective action to resolve shipping and
distribution issues and manage suppliers
Simplify product planning and pricing analysis and Streamline sales and marketing expenses
and monitor results
Conclusion:
The decisions a business makes ultimately determine its future. Successful businesses know how
to collect, access, and analyze important business information and marketing data to make gain
effective, strategic, tactical, and operational insights and make better decisions. Business
Intelligence is the use of processes, applications, and technologies to transform raw data into
meaningful and useful information. A Business Intelligence solution empowers businesses to
achieve remarkable results through better decision-making.
BI Integrated Business Intelligence and Enterprise Reporting capabilities ensure comprehensive
Corporate Performance Management, and provide business intelligence with simple, practical,
affordable features and functionality. BI modules are relevant to all industries and functions and
can be used by the average business user without the assistance of analysts, statistical experts or
technical programmers. No matter the size of organisation, BI solutions can satisfy needs with
flexible licensing and implementation options that include on premises implementation and
hosted implementation.
BI solutions provide a single source, integrated view of enterprise data from numerous sources
and enable every user to build views, balanced scorecards, dashboards and key performance
indicators (KPIs) to satisfy the needs of their role, department and function, so every user is
engaged in the pursuit of strategic, operational and tactical goals and can provide appropriate
support for continued success in acquiring new clients and in retaining existing clients and
selling new products and services in Consumer Packaged Goods Industry.
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doc_123611327.pdf
Business Intelligence is the processes, technologies, and tools that help us change data into information, information into knowledge and knowledge into plans that guide organization to succeed, Technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing and providing access to data to help enterprise users to make better business Decisions.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
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BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR COMPETENCE IN
CONSUMER PACKAGED GOOD INDUSTRY
C. S. RAMANIGOPAL*
G. PALANIAPPAN**
A. MANI***
__________________________________________________________
Abstract:
In today‘s struggling economy with competition controlling and shrinking the landscape, it is
important to make sound business decisions based on complete data. With the proper Business
Intelligent implementation, businesses can make decisions and feel comfortable that they are
provided with the proper tools and data needed to believe in their decisions. Business
Intelligence is the processes, technologies, and tools that help us change data into information,
information into knowledge and knowledge into plans that guide organization to succeed,
Technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing and providing access to data to help enterprise
users to make better business Decisions. The duty of the system is to ensure that correct decision
is taken with the available data at the appropriate time according to the environment. The
relationship between BI and an organization that uses it is that an organization collectively is a
cognitive system: it senses the environment, makes a representation of it, acts on the basis of the
representation and learns from the results of its actions, storing its experience as institutional
memory. This study explores the opportunities of BI in Consumer Packaged Goods Industry.
Keywords: Business Intelligence, System, Cognitive, Performance, Information, Knowledge,
Environment, Decision, Strategies, Consumer, Packaged Goods.
* Professor – Management Studies, Vinayaka Missions University, Salem -636 308.
** Assistant Professor – Management Studies, Vinayaka Missions University, Salem -636 308.
*** Assistant Professor – Management Studies, VMKV Engineering College, Salem -636 308.
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Introduction:
Business Intelligence is the processes, technologies, and tools that help us change data into
information, information into knowledge and knowledge into plans that guide organization
Technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing and providing access to data to help enterprise
users to make better business Decisions. The characteristics of a Business intelligence solution
are Single point of access to information, Timely answers to Business questions, Using BI in the
entire organization. Business intelligence systems can help companies to have a more
comprehensive knowledge of the factors affecting their business, such as metrics on sales,
production, internal operations, and they can help companies to make better business decisions
according to the nature of any Business. Business Intelligence should not be confused
with competitive intelligence, which is a separate management concept.
Business intelligence systems are excellent for the modern business as it has the capacity to
ensure smooth, incessant flow of information without negotiating on security. The duty of the
system is to ensure that correct decision is taken with the available data at the appropriate time. It
greatly reduces the distribution costs spent on the information as well as the handling time. This
is done based on the information provided. It is basically used to enrich the timeliness of
information necessary for the organization. It should facilitate the tracking of changes, recording
and quick response thereby steering the organization to its objectives. And also should facilitate
planning and forecasting.
Technically stating, Business intelligence (BI) is commonly considered to be "the knowledge
gained about a business through the use of various tools and technologies which enable
organizations to turn data into information." The link between BI and an organization that uses it
is that an organization collectively is a cognitive system: it senses the environment, makes a
representation of it, acts on the basis of the representation and learns from the results of its
actions, storing its experience as institutional memory. BI technologies provide historical, current
and predictive views of business operations. Business intelligence aims to support better business
decision-making. Thus a BI system can be called a decision support system (DSS). Though the
term business intelligence is sometimes used as a synonym for competitive intelligence, because
they both support decision making, Business intelligence understood broadly can include the
subset of competitive intelligence. Business intelligence applications have made an impact on
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organizations around the world, enabling companies to have more insight into their business than
ever before. The mix of enterprise reporting with business intelligence made possible to acquire
true competence from obtaining and sharing business information in Consumer Packaged Goods
Industry.
If business competes in the Consumer Packaged Goods industry, it faces the constant challenge
of juggling expanding product portfolios, managing multifaceted supply chain with distinct
service requirements and ensuring compliance with strict regulations and reporting requirements.
The consumer packaged goods industry is reliant on accurate, timely market research, effective,
targeted marketing campaigns and an efficient distribution network and sales force to execute the
enterprise strategy and achieve targets and plans. Today‘s global competition adds a complex
component to the consumer packaged goods market with increased consolidation and
competition in trade, new growth opportunities and sales channels, and critical necessity for
efficient supply chain and cost optimization. To compete in this environment, the consumer
packaged goods organisation must establish and leverage a powerful combination of technology,
business intelligence and results management and deliver quality and value with every shipment
and for every customer.
Historical:
In an article, IBM researcher used the term business intelligence. He defined intelligence as: "the
ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action
towards a desired goal." Business intelligence as it is understood today is said to have evolved
from the decision support systems which began in the 1960s and developed throughout the mid-
1980s. DSS originated in the computer-aided models created to assist with decision making and
planning. In 1989, Howard Dresner (later a Gartner Group analyst) proposed "business
intelligence" as an umbrella term to describe "concepts and methods to improve business
decision making by using fact-based support systems. It was not until the late 1990s that this
usage was widespread.
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Need of BI:
In today‘s struggling economy with competition controlling and shrinking the landscape, it is
important to make sound business decisions based on complete data. With the proper Business
Intelligent implementation, businesses can make decisions and feel comfortable that they are
provided with the proper tools and data needed to believe in their decisions. Without the correct
Business Intelligence solution even well planned and executed data warehouse architectures can
fail. Business Intelligence can provide professionals with the information they need to make the
most effective decisions for their organization. It also provides data about the organizations
details, such as customers, products, and services. Honestly when one can access this
information rapidly and easily in order to take appropriate action or make the right decision
business success is realized.
Objectives of Implementing BI in organization:
Objectives are the business benefits that an organization expects to achieve as a result of
spending time and exerting effort to complete a business intelligence project. Business
Intelligence solutions exist to provide the people within a company with the information
necessary to make the best decisions possible. Improved business decisions should increase
revenues, decrease costs and mitigate risk.
Benefits of Business Intelligence:
BI Improve operational efficiency, eliminate report backlog and delays, find root causes and take
action, negotiate better contracts with suppliers and customers, Identify wasted resources, reduce
inventory costs, sell information to stakeholders, leverage investment, improve strategies with
better marketing analysis, provides better decisions and also challenges against assumptions
with factual information. Some issues still need consideration, though increased efficiency and
extraction of clear information from complex data can improve and reduce the need for data
analyst and improve revenues, determine the exact return on an organizations investment in
Business Intelligence systems can be difficult.
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Business Intelligence can be applied to the following business purposes (MARCKM), in order to
drive business value:
Measurement – program that creates a hierarchy of performance
metrics and benchmarking that informs business leaders about progress towards business
goals.
Analytics – program that builds quantitative processes for a business to arrive at optimal
decisions and to perform Business Knowledge Discovery.
Reporting/Enterprise Reporting – program that builds infrastructure for Strategic
Reporting to serve the Strategic management of a business, NOT Operational Reporting.
Collaboration/Collaboration platform – program that gets different areas both inside and
outside the business to work together.
Knowledge Management – program to make the company data driven through strategies
and practices to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and
experiences that are true business knowledge.
Features of Business Intelligence:
The business intelligence solutions should be contemplated carefully, and the system opted for
should prove to be consistent. Even if add new data or new systems, or bring about major
changes, business intelligence systems have to steer the company to success. Steering to
accomplishment is done by integrating the new data with the existing business intelligence
systems is one of the significant elements of this intelligence solution. Creating or developing
data warehouses consume time, money and energy, whereas creating the data marts are effective.
However, ensure that it contains one data within the organization. Business intelligence needs
suitable analytical tools to assist in gathering information. It categorizes the collected data and
this categorization involves data extraction, conversion and cleansing process. Employing
suitable tools can restore order quickly. The next procedure is to analyze all the stored data to
assist in making decisions. To use the tools properly, users should learn to navigate it through the
systems. Similarly, selecting right tools is necessary to produce perfect results. The elements of
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the business intelligence solutions should be considered as well as the organization requirements
should be determined prior to fitting a business intelligence system.
Importance:
Business Intelligence applications and technologies can enable organizations to make more
informed business decisions, and they may give a company a competence to succeed. Any
organization could use business intelligence applications or technologies to extrapolate
information from indicators in the external environment and forecast the future trends in their
sector. Business intelligence is used to improve the timeliness and quality of information, and
enable managers to be able to better understand the position of their firm as in comparison to its
competitors. Business intelligence applications and technologies can help companies to analyze
changing trends in market share; changes in customer behavior and spending patterns;
customers‘ preferences; company capabilities; and market conditions and may business to
business. Business intelligence can be used to help analysts and managers determine which
adjustments are most likely to respond to changing trends.
Business intelligence applications can enhance communication among departments, coordinate
activities, and enable companies to respond more quickly to changes. When a BI system is well-
designed and properly integrated into a company‘s processes and decision-making process, it
may be able to improve a company‘s performance. Having access to timely and accurate
information is an important resource for a company, which can expedite decision-making and
improve customers‘ experience.
In the competitive customer-service sector, companies need to have accurate, up-to-date
information on customer preferences, so that the company can quickly adapt to their changing
demands. Business Intelligence enables companies to gather information on the trends in the
marketplace and come up with innovative products or services in anticipation of customer‘s
changing demands. Business Intelligence applications can also help managers to be better
informed about actions that a company‘s competitors are taking. As well, BI can help companies
to share selected strategic information with business partners. Some businesses use BI systems to
share information with their suppliers (e.g., inventory levels, performance metrics, and other
supply chain data). BI systems can also be designed to provide managers with information on the
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state of economic trends or marketplace factors, or to provide managers with in depth knowledge
about the internal operations of a business.
Tools and Its Nature:
Many companies are seeking a business intelligence tool that can deliver superior information
quickly and effectively. Competitive companies know that it's not enough to have great
information, have to be able to get it to the people who need it before it loses its value. The
quality of business intelligence — or the data that reveals "why" an organization is performing
the way it is — is often dependent on the quality of the BI tool used to collect, analyze and
deliver it. Inadequate solutions that are difficult to use or that can't unify intelligence gathering
throughout the business will face resistance from users and fail to achieve their potential. A
superior tool, on the other hand, will be quickly adopted across the organization because it offers
immediate value.
Business Intelligence Tools allow users to interrogate data from multiple sources, in any
dimension, in order to understand how a business is performing against certain key performance
metrics. Whilst that sounds simplistic in theory, it is not that easy in practice, because data often
resides in different systems, is stored in different formats, is subject to differing reporting time
periods, and so on. Business Intelligence Tools are designed to make that process of retrieving
the data, analysing it and reporting it, much simpler than it would otherwise be, so that users can
spend their valuable time interpreting results rather than wasting their time trying to compile the
data.
Opportunities:
If we think of business intelligence (BI) as business information and business analysis in support
of fact-based decisions in the context of business processes that impact profits, it quickly
becomes clear that business intelligence is a broad concept. The nature of business information
varies along a number of dimensions, including whether the business information:
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Is about current business transactions and status or about transactions that occurred and
were closed out in prior months or years.
Is about the enterprise as a whole or about subunits of the organization such as strategic
business units or functional departments.
Is about the company or about other entities in the value chain, such as customers and
suppliers.
Is generated by a company‘s internal information systems or whether it is obtained from
external sources such as market research firms.
Is used for management processes, revenue generating processes, or operating processes.
Is detailed transactional information or summarized information about many transactions.
Is intended to be directly accessed by end users or whether it exists as input to
simulations and models.
Is intended for power users, general users, or executives.
Is intended for broad distribution or for more limited role-based use.
Factors to Avoid Failure:
BI is not just a technology, and not just a methodology. It‘s a powerful new management
approach that – when done right – can deliver knowledge, efficiency, better decisions, and profit
to almost any organization that uses it. When BI first came on the scene, it promised a lot but
often failed to deliver. The missing element was the business-centric focus explained in the profit
Impact of Business Intelligence. Business Intelligence shows step by step how can achieve the
promise of BI by connecting it to organization‘s strategic goals, culture, and strengths while
correcting BI weaknesses. It means business centric focus of BI can eliminate failure at the
maximum.
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Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
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2012
Challenges, Issues and Limitations:
Getting the right business intelligence (B.I.) solution in place is becoming increasingly critical to
the success of a business enterprise. Given the current economic crisis it has become more and
more important to capitalize on every possible opportunity and there‘s no better place to start
than squeezing the most value out of the data hold within organization. Businesses, as known,
rarely work at the speed of a report team—information is critical at the specific point in time it is
needed and without the assistance of a crystal ball, is not always known when that is going to be.
To be successful, businesses have to be able to give the people who need the information the
ability to access that data when needed, and on intuitive tools that they don‘t have to be experts
on, Which can be compromised only with help of efficient Business intelligence environment.
Though the demand for Business Intelligence tool is growing at a rapid pace there is still
criticism from the marketplace that the programs are to complex and difficult to use. User
resistance will be one of the biggest hurdles for suppliers of Business Intelligence providers to
overcome. Another potential problem is the Business Intelligence tools themselves. The
applications may be more user friendly than they used to be, the core use of Business
Intelligence is still reporting data rather than process management, though that is slowly starting
to change. Business Intelligence users must careful not to mistake business intelligence with
business analytics.
Business Intelligence Issues:
Key business intelligence issues facing today can be divided into two categories –
? Issues through Organizations and People
? Issues through Technology
Issues found in both categories are:
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Issues through Organizations and People:
1) Management within an organisation are not convinced that data driven or evidence based
decisions really works for them. They prefer to run the operation from instinct.
2) There is no clear overall business strategy laid out with objectives and measures related to
those objectives to assess business progress.
3) IT personnel are overloaded and have no resource available to source the data need for
Business Intelligence (BI) system.
4) There are no incentives for the staff within organisation to improve the performance of the
business either using BI or not.
5) The business is in a state of stress or high change or flux. There is no apparent or perceived
time to establish a BI system.
6) The eventual consumers of the BI system do not really know what they want from a BI system
until they see it. This means lots of changes are required to the solution before it is accepted.
7) IT experts building the system do not really understand the business, and so many changes are
needed to have the system accepted by the organisation.
8) The company does not have sufficient expertise or is not able to hire such expertise to manage
a project implementation on time and within budget or to design the system adequately.
Issues through Technology:
1) The data of the organisation is not clean and the time and effort to correct this or handle this,
destroys the success of the BI project.
2) The BI technology chosen turns out to be so rigid and painstaking to change that the takes too
long and costs too much to complete the project on time.
3) The BI technology used deters use of the system because:
The quality of the presentation or visualization of the information is poor or limited.
? The response times (speed) to present the data is too slow and not acceptable.
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? The flexibility to ask new questions of the BI technology is limited or too difficult or time
consuming to do for either the End Users or BI expert.
Limitation:
The primary limitation of BI implementation is cost, time consuming training, a wide Variety of
technology experts, Extensive system upgrade and maintenance, Movement of data between
disparate data source, Queries done out of BI systems can be cumbersome and time-consuming
to run for end users.
Business Intelligence Advantages:
Advantages of business intelligence that can help any organization increase profitability by
conveying BI system across the firm.
Authorize employees: If an organization allows uncomplicated data access to the user which
is easy to understand and evaluative, the employees can execute in various ways that can
indirectly improve performance and back the entire business plan. Business Intelligence
comprises healthy, lively business score registering, investigation, and reporting equipments
so that every employee across the firm can make faster and enhanced decisions.
Unite people to access data competently and successfully: The initiation of business
intelligence has made decision making a lot simpler. Opinion leaders can access and evaluate
data at any given point of time and place. The latest information is accessible on the users'
desktop or over the internet.
Simplify teamwork and allocation: Business intelligence and partnership expertise
enhances managerial efficiency. Firm incorporation of BI enables the employee to share data
in a security improved, administered web ambiance with the team members, clients, and
associates. They even have a centralized site to supervise their KPIs, access accounts,
evaluate information as well as share texts, and connect to pertinent subject matter.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
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Convey business intelligence to the entire firm: BI backs the width of the firm's business
intelligence requirements. Premeditated planning is uncomplicated when familiar equipments
are used, data supervision is easier and expansion is more lucrative.
Examine and increase insight: The fully integrated Business Intelligence tools enable
employees to increase insight simply by utilizing well-known and accessible tools. When
data is obtained easily and people interact freely, they are better able to investigate and assess
information and then make knowledgeable, astute business plans.
Enhance association: Business Intelligence enhances association across the firm. Expressive
approach, pre-set goals, aims, supervising performance, and then making well-versed
decisions that assists the entire business plan is useful for the organization. Administrators
can now initiate accountability guidelines on a policy diagram and employees can line up
their goals with corporate goals.
Lessen training requirements: With Business Intelligence people can interconnect with
information they desire to access to. Using business tools that are common, easily accessible,
and extensively backed, reduce the training costs of the firm.
Transport refined investigation and reporting: Impressive scorecard practicality backed
by accounts diagrams, graphs and assessments, signifies that employees can voluntarily
follow key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with key business objectives. Accepting
and examining the association between KPIs and corporate goals can lead to better
comprehension of daily business performance, so that the firm can act on it faster.
Disadvantages:
Major Business Intelligence disadvantages are:
Piling of Historical Data: The major objective of Business intelligence system is to
stockpile past data about a firm's deals and reveal it in such a way that it permits
professionals in decision making. On the flip side, this information generally amounts to a
small portion of what the firms actually require to function, besides its restrained worth.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
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Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
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2012
While in other situations, the user may not have interest in historical data as many markets
that the company regulates are in frequent alteration.
Cost: Business intelligence at times can be a little too much for small as well as for medium
sized enterprises. The use of such system can be expensive for basic business transactions.
Complexity: Another disadvantage of BI could be its complexity in implementation of data.
It can be so intricate that it can make business techniques rigid to deal with. In the view of
such premise, many business experts have predicted that these intricacies can ultimately
throttle any business.
Muddling of commercial settings: Business Intelligence can cause commercial settings to
turn out to be much more muddled.
Limited use: Like all improved technologies, business intelligence was first established
keeping in consideration the buying competence of affluent firms. Even today BI system
cannot be afforded by most of the companies. Although, traders in the past few years have
started modifying their services towards medium and small sized industries, but the fact is
that many of such firms does not consider them to be highly essential, for its complexity.
Time of these systems, the BI system can create an existence of their own in the firm. It must
be Consuming Implementation: Many firms in today's fast paced industrial scenario are not
patient enough to wait for the execution of Business intelligence in their organization.
Hence, it becomes vital for the firms to give due thought to the business intelligence aspect.
Due to the intricacy understood by the firm that storing data in the business intelligence
system just for the sake of it does not increase its worth but results in vice versa effect.
Risks Involved:
Most common BI risks BI faces are as below
1. Selected BI tool doesn’t live up to the hype: Many project managers have been duped by
the silky smooth promises of BI sales team.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
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A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
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2. Resistance to change: Most BI implementations will encounter some form of resistance
from people within designated user groups. This often occurs when the value and usefulness
of the project has not be clearly communicated.
3. Failing to account for change: The culture, environment and focus of any business will
change. Therefore, BI requirements, project scope/parameters, reporting needs, data models
and data sources will always be in a state of relative flux. Failing to account for these likely
(or practically inevitable) changes between the requirements gathering and implementation
phase of a BI project can lead to the introduction of a BI solution that fails to reflect true
business needs and is poorly aligned with organizational goals.
4. Poor data quality: Neglecting to adequately clean data and implement stringent data change
management policies, before going live, will culminate in disaster. Delivering meaningless
and inaccurate reports will damage the perception of the BI project (perhaps irreversibly).
5. User adoption is poor: A project manager‘s and BI team‘s worst nightmare: The ?go‘ button
is firmly pressed, but the only activity on the BI platform is the slow, depressing roll of cyber
tumbleweed.
6. Over promising and under-delivering: Promising reporting and analytics for all and then
delivering a handful of in actionable reports for a few will reduce user confidence in the
usefulness of the BI project and the likelihood of ongoing executive sponsorship.
7. Scope Creep: Even if follow the above advice, and develop a realistic delivery schedule,
things can still very easily and very quickly get out-of-hand.
8. Locking everything down from the beginning: Business priorities have changed but the
data collecting and the report types producing haven‘t.
9. Losing financial backing: For a multitude of reasons – some legitimate, some political –
project funding is cut.
10. Too many moving parts make it hard to access information and attain insight: Many BI
tools are made up of different applications and components to satisfy both reporting and
analysis necessities. Navigating between these modules can be cumbersome and restrictive,
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
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particularly for non-technical business users. The result? User abandonment and a missed
opportunity.
Critical success factors, in BI projects:
BI projects are quite complex. If an organization has not nurtured cross-organizational culture, it
is very difficult to implement a successful BI project. Many organizations are already well
equipped to implement successful applications. Some common Critical Success factors are
1. Inappropriate project team structure and dynamics.
2. Ineffective project management (only project administration)
3. Lack of recognizing BI projects as cross-organizational business initiatives and not
understanding that cross-organizational initiatives are different from stand-alone
solutions and also Lack of skilled and available staff as well as suboptimum staff
utilization.
4. Lack of understanding of the complexity of BI projects.
5. No appreciation of the impact of dirty data on business profitability.
6. No business analysis and no standardization activities.
7. No software release concept (no iterative development method) and No understanding of
the necessity for and the usage of meta data.
8. No work breakdown structure (no methodology)
9. Too much reliance on disparate methods and tools
10. Unavailable or unwilling business representatives and also Unengaged business sponsors
or business sponsors who have little or no authority due to their low-level positions
within the organization.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
__________________________________________________________
A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
International Journal of Marketing and Technology
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2012
Key Success Indicators:
Key Performance Indicators are also known as Key Success Indicators, they help an organization
to better define and measure their progress toward professional goals. Once an organization has
clearly identified its need, analyzed its mission, and defined its goals it will need a way to
measure the progress toward those goals. Key Performance indicators are those measurements.
These indicators are measurements agreed upon before hand that reflect the critical success
factors of a business or organization. They differ depending on the business, the business may
decide to appoint the percentage of its income that comes from returning customers as a Key
Performance Indicator, or a college may use the rate of students that meet graduations
requirements as a Key Performance Indicator. No matter what Key Performance Indicators are
selected they must reflect the business or organization goals. This means they must be ?key? or
directly related to its success and they must be measurable. It is also a proficient way to ensure
that a company is taking the correct steps toward realizing their goals for the organization‘s
success. When these indicators are set into place and used to measure what if any impact the
decisions made are having on that specific area, the organization can then fine tune the plan of
action and take the needed steps that will increase the success, profitability, or productivity of
that area.
Performers and Indicators in Consumer Packaged Goods Industry:
True business intelligence (BI) can support, grow and ensure the success of the consumer
packaged goods enterprise, and simplify the process of managing the competitive strategy, the
supply chain, product distribution and other critical business factors.
Financial and Operational Performance Management – Financial and Operational
Performance Management and Analysis enables financial performance and allows the
organisation to establish and meet goals and track progress using a large volume of
information, integrated from numerous enterprise systems and sources. Users can monitor the
financial health of the organisation and create and share reports to comply with government
and industry regulations
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
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A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
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Customer Profitability Management – Customer Profitability Management and Analysis
facilitates excellence in customer service and improves customer acquisition with targeted
marketing and market research. Users can identify the most profitable customers and analyse
buying behavior and preferences.
Profitability Management – Profitability Management and Analysis helps users to evaluate
the competition, the market, analyse risk trends and forecast profitability with dependable
data.
Sales, Marketing and Management –BI provides ample support to establish and manage
the results of marketing campaigns, market research, sales results and targets, individual
sales performance, regional and product sales performance and more.
Shipping and Distribution Channels – Team can monitor and analyse the efficiency of the
shipping and distribution network and its impact on customer satisfaction, inventory, sales and
other factors.
BI is designed to support all requirements and analytical needs including credit analysis for
student loans, regulatory compliance, operations management, loan monitoring, student and staff
performance, demographics, customer profiling and many other factors of business success.
BI for Consumer Packaged Goods – Benefits at a Glance
Highly scalable web-based architecture with role-based 24x7 accesses of information and
services in secure environment.
Assess all aspects of organisation performance, e.g., income, profit, customer satisfaction,
flexibility, transformation and growth
Balance the risk involved with business and growth while maintaining regulatory compliance
Ensure accurate, timely data for better insight into revenues and costs for confident decision
and maximized profitability and also Ensure regulatory compliance and provide accurate,
intuitive reporting
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Ensure accurate, up-to-date financial analysis and also Ensure an ideal combination of
technology, processes and people to optimize business strategy and cost and resource
allocation
Identify profitable partners and improve collaborative business processes. And Identify
redundancies, control costs and discover profitable growth opportunities
Improve customer relationship management with better understanding of their requirements
and Improve performance by integrating management and financial metrics
Leverage investments in existing resources and infrastructure by integrating data from
existing sources
Make timely informed decisions about business strategy and marketing tactics
Monitors, analyses and provides key performance indicators (KPIs) on sales by product,
region, distributor, partner, or sales representative using personalized BI dashboards and
intuitive business intelligence reports
Produce BI Reports for management on performance, customer demographics and other
factors
Provide a simple, intuitive interface that business users can leverage to perform tasks and
fulfill their prescribed role and also Provide an integrated view of market research, customer
feedback, new product planning, marketing campaigns, sales targets and results and trends
Provide capability to handle complex and large data elements in different data schemes
spread over a wide geographic distribution for risk recognition and trend analysis
Provide consistent operational and financial view across organisation to enforce
accountability and information sharing and also Provide true business intelligence to monitor
and analyse results, metrics, and strategic, operational and tactical performance.
Provides the support to eliminate the use of complex, error-ridden spreadsheets in favor of
highly intelligent BI dashboards and business intelligence reports with graphical and drill
down capability
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Receive automated alerts and take immediate corrective action to resolve shipping and
distribution issues and manage suppliers
Simplify product planning and pricing analysis and Streamline sales and marketing expenses
and monitor results
Conclusion:
The decisions a business makes ultimately determine its future. Successful businesses know how
to collect, access, and analyze important business information and marketing data to make gain
effective, strategic, tactical, and operational insights and make better decisions. Business
Intelligence is the use of processes, applications, and technologies to transform raw data into
meaningful and useful information. A Business Intelligence solution empowers businesses to
achieve remarkable results through better decision-making.
BI Integrated Business Intelligence and Enterprise Reporting capabilities ensure comprehensive
Corporate Performance Management, and provide business intelligence with simple, practical,
affordable features and functionality. BI modules are relevant to all industries and functions and
can be used by the average business user without the assistance of analysts, statistical experts or
technical programmers. No matter the size of organisation, BI solutions can satisfy needs with
flexible licensing and implementation options that include on premises implementation and
hosted implementation.
BI solutions provide a single source, integrated view of enterprise data from numerous sources
and enable every user to build views, balanced scorecards, dashboards and key performance
indicators (KPIs) to satisfy the needs of their role, department and function, so every user is
engaged in the pursuit of strategic, operational and tactical goals and can provide appropriate
support for continued success in acquiring new clients and in retaining existing clients and
selling new products and services in Consumer Packaged Goods Industry.
IJMT Volume 2, Issue 5 ISSN: 2249-1058
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A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
Indexed & Listed at: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory ©, U.S.A., Open J-Gage, India as well as in Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities, U.S.A.
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A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories
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