Monitoring The Pulse of Retail - Business Intelligence Tools for the Retail Trade - 0 views
started by Hezekiah Carlsen on 12 May 12
started by Hezekiah Carlsen on 12 May 12
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Data - Having the business to fully appreciate the intricacies on the robust data management system might be a challenge - and to be honest they don't essential info. However, they do need to look at responsibility for the products data going forward. Piecing together historical data is not really as easy as combining a few tables - the real issues will be in the years of badly controlled data entry, meaning erroneous data may be entered into the wrong fields just as soon as combined - it creates a high error rate for the data set.
Once data may be cleansed of historical errors it has to be maintained in a clean state going forward - this means locking straight down software fields with tighter validations and training users to never just plug random text in anywhere that's offered. It also means appointing data stewards to regulate new data and modifications to existing data definitions in each section of the business. These changes are then aggregated for a central repository, managed with the BI Competency Center [BICC].
Company Requirements - The next challenge is in transforming data in order that it is usable for trending and analytics. A lot of data in its current form cannot be disaggregated across months, weeks, days without semantic input in the business - for case, how to deal with erratic sales of widely varying magnitude. Selecting the right KPI and the attributes of people KPI is not additionally understood as one may think. Too often, KPI used for reporting purposes are adopted automagically for dashboards. Yet, several KPI are not suited to performance management.
BI Tools - The layering of the BI tool on data only accounts with regard to 10-20% of any BI undertaking. It's all the customers see, so it is often the majority of what they appreciate with regard to work effort in a BI project. I know this sounds simplistic, however this perspective is less from ignorance and more from deficiencies in time to stop and think about what a BI undertaking involves. A little bit associated with upfront education goes a considerable ways in setting more fair expectations from business users.
Pattern - often overlooked is a design element of dashboards. Dashboard design is a highly skilled art from - but the one that is relatively easy to educate yourself once one is educated on key principles associated with visual perception and pattern.
Transformation - lastly, there are the behavioral changes to make sure that BI becomes pervasive through the entire business. Weaning users of MICROSOFT Excel spreadsheets onto exceedingly complex BI tools is not really the easiest. A simpler route is to get them to appreciate the value of dashboards for a new way of doing work - seeing dashboards for a strategic performance system and not simply a graphical report.
Which means that what's Missing?
The most crucial elements of BI that i see missing that Personally i think could contribute significantly to overcoming most of the issues inherent in the above mentioned phases: