Business Intelligence and Knowledge management with Jedox Database - Essay Example

Topic: Business Intelligence and Knowledge management with Jedox Database Student Name: Registration Number: Institution Name: Tutor’s Name: Date of Submission: 1. Trends that have occurred in Demo Inc in selected products This paper provides an analysis of trends that have occurred in the production of TFT Monitor XA, Notebook SX and TFT Monitor TL by Demo Inc. It tries to explain the historical information relating to their purchases and sales and coming up with a recommendation that can be applied in improving their production. From the data, it is observed that the budgeted units of TFT Monitor XA in Europe in 2007 were higher than the actual sales in the same year. Similar trends were observed in the years 2008 and 2009. The budgeted turnover in 2007 for the same computers was lower than the actual turnover in the year 2007. Similar trends were observed in 2008 and 2009. However, there was an observable incremental in the number of turnover and budgeted units from 2008 to 2009. Furthermore, similar trends were observed in comparing the budgeted and actual cost of sales of the computers where there was also a similar increment in costs of sales from the year 2007 to 2009. In the sale of Notebook SX, it is observed that there was a sharp increase in the budgeted sales of the computer while there was a decline towards the latter months. However, there is a general increase in both the amount budgeted and the amount sold. Similar trends were observed during the analysis of turnover. It was found that there was an increase in the amounts of turnover except in the latter months where there were sharp decreases between the months of September and December. In the analysis of the sale of TFT Monitor TL, it is observed that there was a variation in the demand for the computer over the year in 2007. Variations were not so considerable in 2008 and 2009. The total number of budgeted turnover was lower than the actual turnover in 2007 but higher than budgeted turnover in 2008. There was a small variation between the budgeted costs of sales and the actual sales in 2007 and 2008 but it was observed that there was a high variation between the budgeted and the actual costs of sales in 2009. In the comparison of sales of computers by country, it is observed that most computers were sold to Eastern Europe countries while the least Sales were experienced in Southern Europe. 2. Recommendations regarding business values that can be created from the analysis From the above analysis, it is possible to develop strategies that can be effective in ensuring the sales of computers is successful and maximized in various regions where they are sold. For instance, the above analysis shows that the sale is highest in Southern Europe in the sales of TFT Monitor TL. Thus it would be recommended to sell more of the products in Southern Europe to maximize the sales of the computers. The analysis also shows that there is a variation in budgeted sales and actual sales of TFT Monitor XA in Western Europe. Thus it would be recommended that subsequent sales are targeted to meet only the market demands of the computer machines. The analysis also shows that there was a general reduction in turnover, cost of sales and gross profit in most countries such as Poland, Czech Republic and Austria. It would be recommended that sales, turnover and supply of computers are increased in these countries to improve their chances of sales. The above analysis also provides business managers with idea regarding the right level of costs of sales that needs to be incurred to ensure the profits of the company are not affected. For instance, in the overall sales of Computers of all types, it is observe d that maintaining the costs of sales in a range that ensures the sales of products is measurable with the costs needs to be considered. This is because when costs sure reduced, the overall profits of sales of a product are generally increased. 3. Jedox functionalities that were used in analyzing the data and identifying the trends There are certain Jedox functionalities that were used to analyze this study. This ensured the required target of analysis was reached while costs such as time and effort required for the analysis were considerably reduced. The Jedox functionality that compares the amounts of sales of each product will be useful in obtaining the comparison of contribution of each types of computer in the overall profitability of the company. This will assist the management in coming up with ways of prioritizing on the number of machines of each types that should be bought based on their demands and possibility to contribute to the overall profitability of the organization. The following is a section of a Jedox functionality that can be useful n accomplishing this functionality. localhost/Demo Sales Europe 2007 Actual Turnover Qtr4 Turnover Accumulated in % TFT Monitor XA 1674.808 1674.808 13.10% Notebook SX 1088.742 2763.55 21.70% TFT MonitorTL 1029.107 4869.463 38.20% Figure 1. A Comparison of Turnover from the Sales of Computers by use of Jedox functionality The other Jedox functionality that was used during the analysis is the use of the Paste Element. This is an element that allows creation of a new worksheet by use of the Paste Command. This was mainly achieved when there was the need to individually structure the data. The procedure followed involved creation of paste functions from the Paste elements commands. This allowed description of various information relating to the purchase of computers by the company such as the year of purchase, region of purchase, data types, measures and the actual products. The following is a section of the Jedox functionality that compares the sales from various regions and provides its analysis. local host/Demo Sales Notebook Region Units Turnover Costs of Sales Gross profit Germany 145328 696737 644151 52756 France 129160 659695 591516 48279 Switzerland 57750 284990 265013 119577 Belgium 50574 256596 227480 29215 Table 2. A Jedox function that compares sales from a number of regions and its analysis The other Jedox functionality that was applied in the above study is the Paste data Function that was used to compare the budgeted and the actual sales of computers, In this comparison, it was necessary to use the parameter set by the Jedox worksheet and the user simply entered the data in the right sections where they were to be placed. The main elements that were of concern were the ‘costs’ and the values of Actual and budgeted sales. As a result, the following was the Jedox functionality that was produced. Year Europe Budgeted Actual TFT Monitor XA 4325832 2270621 Notebook SX 34265342 523457 TFT Monitor TL 567213 675234 Figure 3. A Jedox Functionality table that compares the budgeted and the actual sales of computers. 4. Justification of the recommendations based on the readings studied There are many justifications that have been made to support the above recommendations. For instance, it is argued that decision making process should be done in sequential manner and these steps in themselves constitute a decision. These involve determining the problem, followed by defining the problem then specification of the problem then making a decision as to what is right or wrong with regards to the problem (Amo, 2000). During classification of problem, it is argued that most of the problems are caused the executive’s work and decisions and the generic problems should be analyzed at this stage. Most decisions that have been suggested in this paper are those that define the problem and this has been argued to have an edge over solutions that only define boundary conditions. There are also certain approaches that have been argued to result into value creation in organization and these form the basis on which the recommendations in this paper were made. For instance, it is argued that organizations that know the capabilities in terms of analytic adoption are usually those that have substantial experience in analyzing experience in the inspirational stage by looking beyond the cost management stage (Berkman, 2002). These organizations also ensure information is easily transformed and understood and also acted upon. This is achievable through visualization of information, and process simulation or text and voice analysis, social media analysis in addition to other predictive or prescriptive procedures. The other argument of top performing organizations is that data is not the biggest obstacle towards accomplishing their goals. They are not challenged by getting the data right but by quality of the data (Eckerson, 2005). It has been recommending that organizations should use data analysis techniques that ensure the business is improved and management difficulties are solved. It is also explained that transformational leadership of organizations involves capturing data, aggregating it and analyzing it to attain the desired outcome. It also involves sharing of data and insights to know here any changes need to be made to improve the present situation. 5. References Amo, W. 2000. Microsoft SQL Server OLPA Developer’s Guide (New York: John Wiley). Berkman. E. 2002. Balanced Scoreboard Demonstrated IT Value. CIO Magazine, May 15. Busco. C. Frigo, M. Giovannoni, F, Riccaboni, A and Scapens, R. 2005. Beyond Compliance: Why Integrated Governace Matters Today, Strategic Finance, August 11 Codd, E.1970. A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks. CACM, 13(6) 377-387. Eckerson, W. 2005. What Are performance Dashboards?. DM Review, 15(11), 26-29. Eckerson, W. 2006. Ten Mistakes to Avoid when creating performance Dashboards. Bussiness Intelligence Journal, 11(11), 66-71. Read More