Achieving Visibility through Business Intelligence

by Christina Zarrello

Posted On: 11/3/2008

The year 2008 is the year of business intelligence, and the BI dashboard is becoming increasingly important to retailing because it provides retailers with better visibility across their organizations. BI dashboards are visual displays that allow retailers to take large amounts of data throughout the enterprise and view it in a summary format. Dashboards help take the guesswork out of making critical business decisions because they spotlight and identify key business drivers.

The intuitive format of the BI dashboard is highly attractive to time-crunched retailers that do not have the time to sift though mounds of paper. BI dashboards easily identify and respond to critical, time-sensitive events. They also can explore issues and trends without trudging though large amounts of data.

As the face of BI, dashboards help retailers make smarter decisions, optimize performance and achieve strategic objectives.

Drill Down Capabilities

Designed for retail buyers, planners, allocators and store managers, QuantiSense's Business Intelligence dashboard is composed of five sections. Sections include operating summary, trends, opportunities and problems, top and bottom performers and a scorecard. Users are then guided, via QuantiSense Playbooks, to drill into the details regarding specific retail situations, and can take action to capitalize on opportunities and solve recurring problems.

Best Practice Reports

Best practice reports with metrics and KPIs are part of Oco's Retail Intelligence Solution. These reports encompass merchandising, direct marketing, inventory management, store reporting and financials. Data is aggregated from multiple systems, cleansed and organized into a predefined data warehouse that drives analytics and delivers reports to all levels of management across multiple functional areas.

Graphic Visualization

ARC Dashboard version 5.8 from Manthan features graphic visualization capabilities with interactive drilling and filtering features. In addition to a library of pre-built, role-based retail dashboards, ARC provides self-service features that can build custom dashboards. ARC dashboards are integrated with other BI components for click-through without breaking analytic investigation. External market data can be integrated for competitive benchmarking. ARC also provides dashboard configurations for mobile interfaces.