Fresh Direct Business Intelligence

The case shows the implementation of SAP ERP solution in NIBCO, a manufacturer of pipe and fittings, a mid-size manufacturer with about 3,000 employees and revenue over 460 million USD. The company

Target Corporation allocated large budget to upgrade information system as part of a roadmap to transform business (Target Roadmap, 2015). Once the upgrade is completed, it will provide a large amount of intelligent data for internal resources to support customers faster. It further tracks performance and controls accurately the timely information about daily operations in real time. The automated online and on-demand ad-hoc reports generate reports for each store any time as well retains records of products and services.

The authors of “Why ERP?: A Primer On SAP Implementation” discussed the reasons of the successful installation in one facility and the failure in other. Regardless of the nature of the business SAP R/3 has been successful in many organizations such as Ohio plant. The system works very well in organizations that have multiple locations of operations, in” firms for which the change costs are small and in plants which require low flexibility and high centralization (Jacobs & Whybark, 2000, p.126). In contrast, there are many reasons that SAP R/3 might not be successful. SAP R/3 is not appropriate in firms with low turnover and low profitability. Additionally, in some companies manufacturing customized products, SAP R/3 are not appropriate. For instance, the Ohio and North Carolina products are not the same; Ohio’s is in mass production while the other manufactures customized products.

As we discuss the possibility of emerging into business intelligence software we must keep in mind the overall purpose of using any type of software is to reach strategic goals in order to increase market shares. I will discuss how business intelligence software will allow us to meet those strategic goals. We will establish what type of information and analysis capabilities will be available once this business intelligence software is implemented. We will discuss hardware and system software that will be required to run specific business intelligence software. Lastly, I will give a brief synopsis on three vendors (IBM, Microsoft Microsoft and Oracle) that are dominating the business information software

In the case of real-time analysis dashboards have become very popular over the past five years they provide a view of key metrics to allow management by exception. Where post transaction data is being analyzed, data warehousing provides the ideal methodology for enhanced forecasting from the data. This also allows the ability to look for improvements in the supply chain, operations, and marketing to adjust processes and refine a message for marketing as part of a continuous improvement program.

An organization whose sales and marketing has access to all data about leads, prospects and customers in real-time is able to not only both respond quickly and accurately to opportunities, but also to efficiently evaluate markets and proactively generate opportunities from inception to close. An integrated system is the only means by which to accomplish this, as most solely sales force automation software or marketing tracking software does not address this issue.

Kudler Fine Foods (KFF) is a specialty food company that is base in California and has stores located in Encinitas, Del Mar, and La Jolla, its main store. At the stores customers can purchase fine foods such as produce, meat, and other specialty items that they provide. Kudler Fine Foods is considered one of the best fine food stores around. However, Kudler is in serious need of a network infrastructure upgrade of their old one. With the introduction of technology advancements in data collection items such as; network access and increased speeds while still providing information protection; and company communication; are the primary goals of the enterprise network. This step is important because it will increase the income and will reduce the cost of operations within the KFF stores. Kudler Fine Foods will go back up to technological speed as the network upgrade is completed, while at the same time improving the way they keep track of inventory and sales by using data mining techniques, which will be collected and analyzed in real time.

Kudler Foods uses shared databases as a means to increase efficiency and to reduce costs. The use of shared databases creates opportunities for the company to view, manage, and analyze information simultaneously thus providing Kudler with the historical data and forecasting options to consider expanding and increasing profits. Tracking technology, groupware, and workflow software allow Kudler the opportunity to track customer tracking purchase behavior patterns to assist in process refining.

The system will automatically update data inventory for raw material once a shipment has been confirmed from an approved manager’s wireless device. The System shall provide a large data server for all invoices to be scanned in and stored for record purposes. Invoices scanned in will be stored by a Date-Time-Company Code-Order Number, as well as a search function providing employees the ability to retrieve original invoice forms. The system will update all data servers for receiving, shipping, raw materials used and final products produced continuously throughout day-to-day operations.

In the retail market, data record inaccuracies forms one of the most important causes of out-of stock situation. This leads to decrease in revenue for the retailers. Again, the organizations have to bear significant labor costs due to the manual system of data transfer regarding product information. This leads to indirect effects on poor data quality on the supply and demand chain (Legner & Schemm 2008, p.21). Coles Supermarkets have been using barcoding since early nineties. One of the challenges they have been facing was with the manual entries and increased labor costs if a barcode fails to scan. Secondly, barcodes lacked real-time product tracking and this is extremely important for them, as the supply chain is vast in terms of the intermediaries and the locations from which the goods are supplied and delivered. Coles have suppliers within Australia as well as from countries like India, China and Bangladesh. Due to this, they were lacking best practice opportunities of factory gate pricing and reverse logistics (Coles Centenary 2015)

SYSCO was a highly decentralized business composed of over 100 operating companies. Senior executives believed in treating these companies as largely independent businesses whose leaders should be entrepreneurial and growth oriented. Consequently, operating company managers had substantial autonomy; they could market to customers and invest in their businesses as they saw fit.2

Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world and handles more than one million customer transactions every hour and generates more than 2.5 petabytes of data storage (Venkatraman & Brooks, 2012). To put this into perspective, this data is equivalent to 167 times the number of books in America’s Library of Congress (Venkatraman & Brooks, 2012). So how can Wal-Mart use this massive amount of data and what useful information can this data provide? This paper will provide a brief overview of the importance of Business Intelligence (BI) and how the largest retailer in world, Walmart, is using it.

ERP, which is an abbreviation for Enterprise Resource Planning, is principally an integration of business management practices and modern technology. Information Technology (IT) integrates with the core business processes of a corporate house to streamline and accomplish specific business objectives. Consequently, ERP is an amalgamation of three most important components; Business Management Practices, Information Technology and Specific Business Objectives.

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. ERP is one complete system to rationalise processes and data across the whole organisation, so business decisions can be data driven. The perception of ERP is a joint database that supports numerous purposes used by different business elements which in practice this means that staffs in different departments for example, accounting and sales can

ERP software is designed to model and automate many of the basic processes of a company, from finance to the shop floor, with the goal of integrating