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Why use a Business Intelligence Solution? |
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It's well and truly possible that within your company you have one or many network drives somewhere in your network packed with folders that look something like the Screenshot on the left.
Where every brand manager in the company has their own copies of different plans. Making amendments, linking to their forecast and substantiation worksheets, and creating revisions. This typical scenario is being referred to (not so affectionately) as Spreadsheet hell.
This system does have its place within small but growing wholesale companies, but somewhere between the 50 and the 100 Products mark things can start to go wrong.
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The Brief - Demand Planning |
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This particular buying report uses some pretty standard functions to calculate a recommended order quantity based on a 'Required Months Cover' setting per Brand.
Original Workbook Features:
- A worksheet per Brand and over individual 120 Products.
- Stock Wholesale and recommended Retail Prices.
- Unit Weight and Size.
- Calculated Metrics to assist Planning
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The Solution Architecture |
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The solution looks and feels very similar to the original, making it very easy for users to adopt whilst being robust enough to prevent users from overwriting formulas, changing Actual Data, or do any detrimental damage. The built in Product Hierarchy allows for automatic summary of Products, Departments, Accounts or any other specified Category.
Solution Features:
- All Original Workbook Features but with a more robust Colaborative Planning.
- Linking Sales and Standard Cost of Goods Sold to a Profit & Loss Report
- Allows for What-If Scenarios and High Level Sensitivities
- Updating with Sales Numbers Nightly from the Sales Database.
- Prevent Users from themselves - Breaking Links, Hardcoding Formulas.
- Consider Stock Order's Physical Pallet Size and Compare to Available Warehouse Space.
- A Pivot-table view of the data so users can get the data they want with-out writing SQL.
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The ROI |
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Costs:
- 3 days with a single Keystone Consultant - $4800
- Optional Keystone Annual Support Plan - $8000pa
Savings:
- Relieved Excel Report Builder who Built and Distributed Daily Reports - $56,000pa
- Sales Report was created by Finance and sent to Sales Team daily - Now Automated.
- Demand Plan Monthly Roll-over required creating a new model and constantly updating the Current Month Sales Column - Now Automated.
- Demand Planning has become more accurate due to no-one entering "+20000" type adjustments to Excel Formulas.
- Demand Planning has become more accurate as there is only one source of the truth.
- Demand Planning has become more timly as no spreadsheets are being emailed around for approval.
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