1. Ben & Jerry’s is a perfect example of BI good case practice. To understand the concept better, the term “business intelligence (BI)” refers to technological solutions and other applications that support decision making process by analyzing data. (Phillips et al., 2006) The ice cream products market is quite saturated and according to some researches, competitive advantage depends on such criteria as price, quality and product variety. However, recent focus fell on healthiness of products and their nutrition value. Companies keep developing new products in order to accommodate the needs of the customers. Therefore, by using an online analytical processing technology from BI software, Ben & Jerry’s can directly influence their quality and improve brand image. Their BI solution is designed to detect consumers’ complaints and adjust quality in accordance with them. Besides this, tools helped the management to analyze sales, finance, purchasing and quality in their company. It is extremely important to react upon customers’ feedback and use this information for making strategic decisions. Technology can also provide Ben & Jerry’s improved ideas for their product and lead to creating a unique competitive advantage.
2. It is a well-known fact, that the 21st century is an informational era. Whoever possesses more information is the winner in a certain area. However, it doesn’t matter how much information is collected if a user can not utilize it. Information cleansing and scrubbing is crucial to California Pizza Kitchen’s business, because it ensures faster analysis and more accurate results. Since financial statements are the core performance indicators in any business, they must be kept in order. California Pizza Kitchen has more than 130 restaurants now, so improper maintenance of their database could cause great loses. Informational cleansing usually eliminates redundant records, corrects and fills missing data, informs about erroneous relationships. (Phillips et al., 2006)
3. The accuracy of information is a relevant factor. Mostly because it varies depending on a setting or time; thus, if a company doesn’t manage to collect information today, tomorrow the results will be different. Moreover, perfect information requires more resources and it is expensive. 100% accuracy and completion is difficult to obtain, because those two concepts overlap. The value of information increases with its accuracy and completion. When there is no opportunity to enter accurate data, it will be incomplete. For example, a phone number from Albany without an area code is accurate, but incomplete. In contrast, mistake in revenue calculation may be complete, but not accurate. Noodles & Company balances between accurate and complete information in order to create certain solutions. As many other companies, they choose approximately 65% accurate information and 85% complete.
4. Ben & Jerry’s is using BI to ensure quality management. As described before, customers pay attention to the ingredients and their value, so this tool helps to maintain good image of the company. Ben & Jerry’s competitive advantage is outstanding quality.
California Pizza Kitchen is using BI to improve financial statements analysis. They chose a tool that suits their capacities the best and now have access to more accurate data. CPK also applied information cleansing to ensure, that information is more valid. In contrast with other companies, CPK is able to forecast sales better, define their weaknesses and work on them better.
Noodles & Company is using BI also to improve their financial statements management. This tool allows them to pull information from wide array of systems and strengthen their strategy according to this analysis.
References:
Amy Phillips, Paige Baltzan, Stephen Haag (2006), Business Driven Technology 2ed, McGraw Hill
Amy C. Rea "Screaming for ice cream: a rapidly growing market, ice cream nevertheless faces its share of possible demons. What will be the effect of changing demographics on the frozen treat, and how will manufacturers respond?". Prepared Foods. FindArticles.com. 18 Dec, 2011.
