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would feed aggregated P&L (profits and losses) performance data into the
system for financial reporting. The solution was also used to build daily
budgets, which are then fed back into the data-warehouse solution and to
the ERP solution at the monthly level.
The BI solution sits on top of their database and talks directly to their
ERP and is well integrated to their data warehouse. They use this synergy
of business intelligence systems for real-time KPI reporting and a com-
plete focus on process management. Universal is also building KPI dash-
boards that will link directly to monthly or quarter-to-go analysis, show
top-level and detailed department P&Ls, enable dynamic month-to-date
and year-to-date calculations, and provide standard reporting templates.
This solution has provided the company with real-time visibility into both
leading and lagging KPIs, as well as detailed category and sales-channel
penetration and scenario-enabled modeling with detail on both risk man-
agement and variance analysis. The company's source systems are com-
pletely integrated with financial process controls.
The Science of Gathering Business Intelligence
Frito-Lay, Quaker Oats, and Universal Hollywood use a first-class set of
BI tools and procedures to collect, collate, and reassemble internal and
external data to provide enough information to perform competitive deci-
sion making. The systems, which have been refined to the point of provid-
ing these companies tailored, filtered, and usable information, required an
intensive two-level effort to create. On the first level was the development
of the underlying technological infrastructure, permitting the informa-
tion to be distributed to and analyzed by the appropriate parties. On a
higher level was the effort required to determine the depth and breadth of
the information that would be required.
Sitting a hundred people in a room with access to every newspaper, jour-
nal, magazine, and book that has ever been published will produce only
disconnected tidbits of information. Virtually every piece of information
in these journals, magazines, books, and newspapers is available online
through any of a myriad of information vendors for a fee or free via the
Internet. With merely a PC, it is possible for farmers in Idaho to ascertain
long-term weather conditions and for businessmen to download informa-
tion on products, competitors, or trends.
Even with easy access to this wealth of information, however, you still
don't have intelligence. Take the case of a major pharmaceutical company.
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