The Problem: Lack of information
The company had over a dozen divisions, most of which were experiencing declining sales, but had no way to assess overall trends by geographic market, distribution channel or customer. They also had no way to share information on customer accounts between the divisions and were missing opportunities to leverage their individual customer relationships on a company-wide basis.
The Solution: Business Intelligence
I sponsored and directed the acquisition and implementation of a business intelligence tool. The base software cost less than $30,000 but provided a platform for top management of this multi-billion dollar company to access company-wide sales analytics. I developed the design specifications for the data base and developed the reporting applications to give views of the data down to the zip code level, providing analytics by metropolitan statistical areas, distribution channel, customer and time period. Even though data had to be gathered into a common SQL data base from a dozen companies, this entire project was completed on time in about three months. Because it was browser-based, users required little training and were provided with dynamic menu options to select data that met their specific needs.
