Business Intelligence of Sysco Company - Case Study Example

Sysco BI Case Table of Contents Question 3 Question 2 4 Question 3 5 Question 4 6 Question 5 7 References 9 Bibliography 10 Question What will bethe biggest obstacles facing Sysco as the BI implementation efforts spread throughout the company? Answer: Business Intelligence (BI) is a process where large amount of data can be examined, providing managers and business owners only that information which is useful and resourceful. BI software has predefined reports and allows users to help them develop their own graphs. Along with the analyzing and reporting of data of the past, it also helps the customer to look into the future. The main objective of this software is to accumulate the historical data and then reveal the information to the user in such a way that it becomes easier for the professional in decision making. At Sysco, the main problem that might arise after the implementation of business intelligence is that the information that is provided is too small of what is actually required by the firm in order to function. Moreover at many times, the user may not at all be requiring the past data as the market is volatile and is subjected to frequent changes. The obstacle can be that Sysco will require more number of users for implementation and there are huge license fees for the set up of the software. Moreover the other difficulty that it will face is that a number of the companies already have small scale intelligence application and Sysco had decentralized IT structure which if the companies try to uninstall would be very time consuming and costly. It will therefore muddle the already existing commercial setting. Question 2 Why did Sysco decide initially to address only two questions with its new BI software rather than use it as a more general analysis tool? Why did Business Objects recommend this approach? What are the tradeoffs? Answer: Initially only two questions were taken into consideration as both the questions were quite predictive and forward looking. It is also to be noted that one question deals with the products that is to be delivered to the customer and the other question deals with the customers. The answer provided to the question covers all the important aspects like competitors, customer satisfaction, customer services, customer profile that is the key to success for any firm. Moreover it is felt that initially during the implementation phase the company should focus only on the software, users and the training on answering the questions. The answer to the question was good enough to serve the customer in the better way and also it proved how good ‘Business Object’ can be at delivering the best product to Sysco. The various capabilities of Business Intelligence are Dashboards, Extraction, Data mining, Ad hoc querying and reporting, event notification, predefined analytics. Business Objects had products in all these categories where as other companies focused mainly on one or two features and this can be regarded as the trade offs. Question 3 Researchers have identified 10 key challenges in BI implementations: budget constraints, data quality, managing user expectations, culture change, time required to implement, data integration, education and training, ROI justification, business needs analysis and management sponsorship. What would be the most important challenges from the perspective of non-IT managers? What would IT managers say? Answer: It has been found that the mechanism of business intelligence is present in almost all of the organizations irrespective of the size and shape. However its implementation is ad hoc and it generally takes place in departmental levels that is basically done without any Business intelligence strategies. The reason for such a happening is that many of the managers find it insignificant as it doesn’t provides appropriate access to the corporate information. The other biggest challenge is the fragmentation of business intelligence. Most of the organizations are having fragmented business intelligence where the different departments are using overlapping products. Among the challenges that researchers have identified, the most important challenge would be to manage the budget constraints. Implementation of business intelligence generally involves huge amount of money. Fragmentation of business intelligence leads to huge amount of money as the existence of multiple disconnected business intelligence projects lead to greater inefficiencies as the procurement cost are quite higher and also the training cost are very expensive. Business needs analysis is also one of the important challenges for the non-IT managers. Most of the companies are not able to identify the needs of the customers as well as its own needs. The company has to respond to the changes that are taking place. Hence this has become one of the main challenges. IT managers may face data integration problem and education as well as training challenges. Understanding of the business intelligence requires a lot of training on the part of IT managers. After they have developed such software they need to make people educated about its implementation which is a very cumbersome task. Question 4 How much software should Day buy at this time? Why? Answer: It is very difficult to decide as to how much software Day should buy at this moment. She has to be very careful in deciding these as more number of purchases may drop the price as the number of license goes up but on the other hand, Day has to consider the users’ awareness towards the software, whether the customer is able to use the software or not. Hence, they can’t even overbuy to get volume discounts. In the initial stages, they need to train the various staffs who would learn the methods of using the software and then decide as to how much to buy. Buying of all the modules will not be wiser as that would raise the overall cost. After careful analysis of the modules, it can be said that she can opt for third module that is volume discount scenario where she would be getting more of discounts on license purchase and she would also have both the software that is customer intelligence module and supply chain module. Question 5 Is BI likely to be a competitive differentiator for Sysco? What does "competitive differentiator" mean? Answer: Competitive advantage exists when the firm’s products or services are perceived as better by the target customers as compared to the competitors (Taylor & Et. Al., “Competitive Advantage”). Competitive differentiator is a type of competitive advantage which means that a firm seeks to be unique in its industry in certain areas that are widely praised by consumers. It has to be remembered that the differentiator is not able to ignore the cost position and it has to try to decrease the cost. They mean different things to different people but they are communication of ones ability in order to be unique, to stand in a different position and to be relevant to its market place. Competitive differentiator provides competitive advantage which implies a factor which will make the customer choose a particular firm compared to that of the competitors. These factors if nurtured by leadership and advanced by firm’s strategy; are both value based and sustainable. In order to gain competitive advantage the firm has to be stern about messaging and communication in order to build consistency, influence and relevance. In order to enhance the competitive advantage it is important to focus on what is required by the customers. It is also important to recognize who the competitors are and what are they doing (Mazerolla & Class, “Defining Your Competitive Differentiators”). There is no doubt that implementation of business intelligence can be a competitive differentiator for Sysco. Both the internal as well as external data is required by the companies, but many times it is found that the companies mostly focus only on external data without loosing its grip on internal data. Hence business intelligence will help Sysco to capture the data needed for the corporate, competitive and functional strategy. Business intelligence is a broader concept in comparison to the data warehouse as it is the essential component to the Sysco’s overall strategy. Implementation of data warehouse may increase the decision making capability of Sysco but to achieve the objective of the corporate, business as well as functional strategy data have to be gathered from both internal as well as external sources and business intelligence system has to be put to place. Hence business intelligence becomes the essential part of organization from the strategic viewpoint (Oguz, “Business Intelligence in Competitive Strategy”). References Oguz, M. T. “Business Intelligence in Competitive Strategy”. September 24, 2010. Strategic intelligence, 2002. Mazerolle, A. & Class, M., No Date. “Defining Your Competitive Differentiators”. September 24, 2010. Images. Taylor, M. L. & Et. Al. “Competitive Advantage”. September 24, 2010. Strategic Management, 2005. Bibliography Adner, R. & Zemsky, P. “A Demand-Based View of Sustainable Competitive Advantage: The Evolution of Substitution Threats, Resource Rents and Competitive Positions”. September 24, 2010. 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