Chichinango Halaweza

Chapter 11. Minicase 1

Lexmark International Improves Operations with BI

Identify the challenges faced by Lexmark regarding information flows.

The challenges faced by Lexmark regarding information flows are: real-time update information availability, accuracy in information delivery and latency gap in reactive sales activities.

How were information flows provided before and after implementation of the BI system?

Information flows before using BI systems were slow and inaccurate. Anyway, information flows faster in precise way, with much better usability for management and sales performance.

Identify decisions supported by the new system.

Decisions supported by new systems are: sales forecasting, inventory management, replenishment management and so on.

How can the system improve customer service?

First of all, stockouts are avoided by the new system. Secondly, this will lead to higher customer satisfaction rate. Also, best-sold products are always available on shelf, so customers will be happy about this.

Go to MicroStrategy’s Web site (microstrategy.com) and examine the capabilities of Retail BI System. Prepare a list.

Capabilities’ list of MicroStrategy:

* Provide critical decision support system to your enterprise;

* Perform data mining, financial analysis, data visualization, and more;

* Run against all enterprise resource planning data sources and your data warehouse;

* All from the same Web interface with one common metadata on the MicroStrategy BI platform.

Go to the SAS Web site (sas.com) and find their Retail Intelligence product. Compare it with MicroStrategy’s product. Also, compare it with Oracle Retail (oracle.com/retek).

SAS Supply chain Intelligence solutions deliver a critical advantage to organizations by helping them turn data into knowledge, enabling organizations to develop unique insights about their demand patterns, supply networks, operations and customer service requirements. The result is improved efficiently...