Skimming over tweets and twitters yesterday I was pulled into reading a survey done by Consumer Reports on America’s top stores. What struck me <the most> was “…the most prevalent problems were that desired items were out of stock and checkouts were jammed.” The comment was that the problem was much worse at Walmart, Kmart and Meijer’s. How much of this was due to “Actionable intelligence” or reporting not getting to the right people? [link to Consumer Reports article]
This is years after the rush for business intelligence began.
No question – there are tons of tools on the market. Nice stuff which integrates with any database flavor desired. You can build a warehouse, spin a cube, distribute data, add all kinds of ‘if-then’ rules and alerts, add thresholds… it goes on and on. You can have it in any style: pivot, flat, .pdf, html – iPhone, Smartphone, Droid – it’s all there. There is no lack of technology and it’s easy to use. Why then are people not taking advantage of reporting and analytical solutions to help bring greater efficiencies to their business and improve their business relationships?
In a word: traffic. Maybe in four words… traffic expense…implementation fees…
Traffic is the term we generically assign to the flow of data volume between trading partners. When it must go through a value added network, hosted EDI provider or other ‘middleware’ company it has a price tag attached to it. Regardless of the communication protocols used it is typically measured per kilobyte, kilo character or document. While it will end up a commodity, it is still relatively expensive, even compared to prices from five years ago. Implementation fees: a lot of companies think because the word intelligence is used they can charge thousands of dollars for applying a formula to some data.
The value of business intelligence is undeniable, but many companies (Vendors) ignore the data. Others still, ask their clients not to send it whenever possible. What if Vendors weren’t charged for the data required to build the report? Would companies still shy away from it?
Let’s see what a common business case could look like… if I am a vendor working with Walmart, Target and PetSmart and I want to measure my sales per client (Or item, or retail location), and sell thru and I would like to see what my shipping and invoicing accuracy is. Give me the ability to define regions, or location demographics as well as attributes to better manage things like item cost, bin locations, supplier info, etc. Then deliver the reports to me once a week as a spreadsheet via e-mail – AND I want a GUI to view the data online. I am in 1,500 Walmart, 900 Target and all PetSmart locations and my kilocharacters are between 5,000 and 15,000 monthly depending on season.
What’s the value of these two reports? Tell me what the ‘happy to buy’ price point is. Let’s forget about the data expense – pretend there isn’t one for a moment. Common sense should compel people purchase (At the right price) especially if it helps prevent out stocks, charge backs and so on. Either shoot me an e-mail ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) or leave a comment. Also try us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/RetailEDI) or on Linkedin (RetailEDI).
