The New World of Business Intelligence and

Performance Management

Business Problems Solved:

With better Business Intelligence

This document presents a series of business challenges, why organizations faced

them and how these problems were solved through the use of business intelligence
best practices.
Charlotte Russe
Charlotte Russe is a leading mall-based clothing retailer dedicated to
affordable women's clothing. The company currently operates 400 stores in 43
states. Despite its success as a fast growth company opening roughly 50 stores per
year, Charlotte Russe struggled with budgeting and planning.
Its sales, markdown and performance analysis/planning processes involved
manual steps that were a significant burden on productivity. Their plans and analysis
lacked accuracy and consistency. The processes had been subjected to missed
deadlines, fallout and fire-fighting. Charlotte Russe embarked on the transformation
initiative to automate and improve their sales, markdown and performance analysis
processes.
The implementation of BI applications enabled Charlotte Russe to improve
on all of their existing problems. Overall, the user-friendly dynamics were more
efficient and allowed the firm to utilize effective methods for collaboration and
reporting. Many users are now able to simultaneously work with the system. They
were able to streamline sales analysis and markdown planning processes from days
to minutes. They reduced fallout, eliminated data entry errors and improved
accuracy and realism of the planning models. Now, analysts and management can
focus on analysis activities rather than data maintenance and administration tasks,
especially due to all the significant improvements in accessing, visualizing and
analyzing the relevant inventory and store sales data contained the corporate data
warehouse.

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 The New World of Business Intelligence and
Performance Management

Computer Gross
Computer Gross is the key distributor of computer hardware and software in
Italy. Computer Gross distinguishes itself by its high level of service and capacity for
innovation. Computer Gross has succeeded in acquiring over 2,800 retailers and
becoming the number one distributor of IBM products in Italy. Their business
challenges cover various application areas such as sales, budgeting, process
management, finance, and inventory monitoring.
Computer Gross Italy was looking for a way to achieve better control over
their daily business, to become more agile in their decision-making process and to
uncover new business opportunities. The general director of the company, Ingemar
F. Bianchini, explains their needs and their search for a “… solution that would finally
free our people in charge of product groups to create analyses themselves at will,
and to provide them with deeper detail than we believed possible."
The implementation of a BI application provided Computer Gross with a
single tool that could easily perform analysis, from simple to extremely complicated,
in a single view, with swift response times. One of the most significant benefits, as a
company in the retail and distribution industry, was the new ability to daily monitor
the course of business for over 5,000 products, with a detailed analysis of each
product line, geographic area, vendor and customer.
"The most surprising thing," underlines Sr. Bianchini, "is that the speed in
reply times and the flexibility to give autonomy to end users are accompanied with
considerable simplicity of utilization! The user training was really minimal, the IT
group responsible, after only five days, was able to train all of the users at Computer
Gross."
"The success reached enabled Computer Gross to extend management
intelligence to other areas of the business, such as management control, provide
attention to specialty products, perform margin analysis by product line, geographic
area and transaction, and then pass the analysis to the warehouse with indicators of
rotation and obsolescence, and to combine our Marketing efforts to continue our
growth, to become one of the largest distributors in the IT market," he said.

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877-US-BOARD
 The New World of Business Intelligence and
Performance Management

Harvey Nichols
Harvey Nichols is a high fashion retailer, focusing on branded merchandise and
quality food and restaurant offerings. With a staff of 3000, Harvey Nichols is a
leading retailer in the UK and Ireland. The main areas this firm was experiencing its
challenges involved reporting/analytics, budgeting and forecasting.
They were in need of a harmonized approach that provided an easier, accurate and
cost-effective method for their operations. Martin Schofield, retail operations
director, explains “Our existing reporting wasn’t cohesive or reliable and was
produced by a myriad of different tools. Users were not confident in the accuracy or
reliability of the data.”
The benefits that resulted from the addition of advanced business intelligence
included system enhancements, consistent data and improved performance. The
huge pressure put on the IT department by the demands of a retail business to
provide ad hoc reports/analysis and to answer a barrage of questions about the
accuracy, consistency and usefulness of the data has virtually disappeared. This
freed up time to concentrate on delivering further projects, and continuously
improving performance.
Business Objects reports used to take anywhere between 30 to 60 minutes to
run, and now those same reports can be produced virtually instantaneously. Martin
Schofield comments “Users are now able to have the data that they require at their
fingertips, allowing them to concentrate on the analysis they should be doing, rather
than sitting around waiting for the reports to be produced.”
Hein Gerike
Hein Gerike is an international trading company with a strong own-label
presence. The company sells equipment, technical products, luggage and all sorts of
accessories in addition to a wide selection of clothing and helmets.
For a trading company like Hein Gericke, its supply chain is the core of the
whole business activity, and is critical to the company’s success. In order to be able
to satisfy market requirements in this dynamic field, the company was looking for an

Board; The New World of Business Intelligence and Performance Management

www.board.com
877-US-BOARD
 The New World of Business Intelligence and
Performance Management

information and planning system through which its in-house optimization initiative
could be implemented.
The main areas of application that Hein Gerike benefitted greatest from by
implementing BI applications include top-down revenue planning and bottom-up
sales planning. Also rolling forecasts, which are inserted between the input of the
bottom-up planning and the final calculation of purchase-order proposals. They also
significantly benefitted from the forecasts of stocks, consisting of a "sawtooth” curve
for the stock trend for the next 12 months that takes into consideration the
purchase-order proposals calculated by the system itself. Lastly, the use of purchase
order proposals allows buyers to rely on the BI system’s proposals, instead of
generating vague purchase-order proposals for over 50,000 items on the basis of
long lists.

The above organizations selected BOARD as their BI application.

About BOARD
Founded in 1994, BOARD International is the global leader in the Business
Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management toolkit space. BOARD has
enabled over 1800 companies worldwide to rapidly deploy BI & CPM applications in a
single integrated environment in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional
solutions.
BOARD’s offerings are unique because we rapidly deliver an all-in-one toolkit solution
that gives you a simple, easy to use, comprehensive view into each and every part
of your organization, ensuring your ability to make the best decisions possible with
the most up-to-date information available. BOARD fully integrates your business
processes and therefore uniquely links performance to strategic vision at all levels
down to the operational detail.

Board; The New World of Business Intelligence and Performance Management

www.board.com
877-US-BOARD