Implementation of Cross-Functional BI Solutions for Global Consumer Brands

Abstract

For the past ten years, consumer brands have heavily relied on traditional Business Intelligence (BI) solutions to enhance the growth and profitability across the organization. As the organization expands the need for enhanced, comprehensive, integrated, and intuitive BI solutions is increasing. To meet the need for such solutions organizations started exploring solutions for solutions. The Traditional BI tools usually cannot see the big picture because of their siloed nature, limiting the capacity of strategic decision making. This is where the Cross-functional BI solutions come into the picture offering critical benefits by bringing the capabilities of integrating data from multiple sources and giving a consolidated perspective on the organization’s performance. In this white paper, we present the costs and the benefits of implementing cross functional business intelligence solutions for brands that have a global presence. These solutions will enable decision makers and leaders to view holistic, data- backed insights across the organization. Recent Gartner studies emphasizes the importance and demand to shift towards data supported cross performing BI tools and dashboards. This paper also addresses the challenges in implementing these solutions. The most common problems are data integration issues, cultural resistance, and the need for strong data governance principles and structure.For each challenge there are solutions, especially in data-rich world with enhanced solutions, we will also discuss proven methodologies to overcome challenges, some of these methodologies involve organizational readiness assessment, se- lecting appropriate BI tools, and implementing effective change management strategies.