Supply Chain

Business Intelligence

Adoption, Use and Practices

White Paper
sponsored by

Aligning Business and IT to Improve Performance

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 Ventana Research – Supply Chain Business Intelligence

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 Ventana Research – Supply Chain Business Intelligence

San Mateo, California

April 2007

Ventana Research performed this research for a fee to determine the needs and
practices of organizations that use business intelligence (BI) technology in the supply
chain. This document is based on our research and analysis of a quantitative survey
administered via the Web to qualified respondents. Qualification was based upon use
or intended use of business intelligence technology to create supply chain-focused BI
and/or analytical applications.

This research was designed to investigate the practices and needs of individuals and
organizations that use or wish to use BI applications specific to the supply chain. This
research is not intended for use outside of this context and does not imply that
organizations are guaranteed success by using only these results to improve
organizational productivity. Moreover, gaining the most benefit from your supply
chain BI applications, whether custom-built or vendor-developed, requires an
assessment of your organization’s unique needs.

We certify that Ventana Research wrote and edited this report independently, that
the analysis contained herein is a faithful representation of our evaluation based on
our experience with and knowledge of supply chain BI applications, and that the
analysis and conclusions are entirely our own.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary ....................................................................................... 5
Key Insights .................................................................................................. 8
Customer service and visibility of inventory are driving initiatives. ................... 8
Companies use supply chain BI to manage demand. ...................................... 8
Most companies will use supply chain BI in most functional areas. ................... 8
Most organizations are not very mature in use of supply chain BI. ................... 8
Projects take time..................................................................................... 9
Key Metrics can be hard to come by, not timely and sometimes incomplete. ..... 9
Spreadsheets and in-house applications remain in wide use...........................10
Users want dashboards ............................................................................10
Access to data remains difficult..................................................................10
Multiple systems create difficulties for supply chain BI. .................................10
Integration with financial and forecast data is an important but unmet need. ...11
Companies need to automate data transmissions from partners. ....................11
What To Do Next ..........................................................................................12
Assess your maturity and take steps to improve it........................................12
Expand deployments beyond direct supply chain users..................................12
Measure the performance of your processes. ...............................................12
Use supply chain BI to improve your Balanced Scorecard. .............................13
Integrate plans, schedules and forecast data. ..............................................13
Use advanced BI technologies to improve decision-making. ...........................13
How Ventana Research Can Help .....................................................................15

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Executive Summary
Ventana Research views business intelligence (BI) as a key enabling technology for
effective performance management. BI technology provides quantitative data and
tools to manipulate it so users can perform business analysis that supports decision-
making. Large and midsize businesses have invested many millions of dollars in BI
software implementations as they strive to provide more business users with access
to information that will improve the company’s results.

This research study explores the adoption and use of business intelligence
technology, assessing how executives in the various functions of manufacturing and
supply chain operations view it and the role it is playing, or should play, in their
organizations. Ventana Research undertook this study to evaluate the market, to
determine organizations’ maturity and to identify trends and priorities in their
adoption.

We promoted the study through our media partners in North America and around the
world. It elicited a high level of response, allowing us to base our findings on analysis
of 427 validated responses. The qualified respondents evenly represent companies
whose annual revenues span from less than US$100 million to more than US$1
billion. Every significant industry is represented. In terms of people, the size of the
companies represented ranges from 100 to more than 10,000 employees. The
respondents themselves came from various parts of their companies, including
executive management, operations and information technology.

Our survey defined supply chain BI analytics and applications as specific

combinations of BI technology created to support business processes such as
inventory visibility, commodity spend and customer profitability. BI technology
includes dashboards, scorecards, reports, predictive analytics and ad-hoc query
tools, online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes, metadata, database schemas,
extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) scripts and data warehouses.

We divided our survey questions into four categories, focusing on the people,
process, information management and technology aspects of supply chain BI, and we
evaluated the maturity of organizational deployment and use of BI from each of
those perspectives. The Ventana Research Maturity ModelTM categorizes and
evaluates maturity at four levels: Tactical, Advanced, Strategic and Innovative.
Overall, we found companies that practice or will practice supply chain BI do so at
either the Tactical or Advanced level. We identified only 9 percent of respondents’
companies that could be considered Innovative. These Innovative companies use
supply chain BI not only to manage their supply chain processes but also to help
manage their demand-shaping activities. This research makes clear that as a whole –
across all the elements of supply chain BI – most companies have substantial room
for improvement.

This research also reveals that improved customer service and inventory visibility are
the goals driving supply chain BI initiatives. Choosing from among an array of
business improvement results, companies told us they are looking to apply BI
primarily to sharpen the accuracy of forecasting, reduce costs, reduce inventory
levels and better understand the drivers of customer demand. This finding is
confirmed by the fact that the majority of reporting companies said supply chain BI
currently is or will be used to support demand planning, customer account

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management and sales and operations planning. Even though companies intend
supply chain BI to reduce inventory and costs, the evidence shows that they are
primarily intent upon using supply BI to improve forecasts and demand
management.

In general, we find that supply chain BI projects take time, typically more than six
months. The relative slowness of implementation projects is caused mostly by two
important but time-consuming tasks for IT: developing a detailed understanding of
operational data sources and defining business users’ requirements. The most time-
consuming task for business users was confirming the accuracy and consistency of
data. Confirming the accuracy of data is consistent with the time spent by IT in
developing data sources, because many of the requirements are dependent on what
data is available and where it is located. Confirming the data’s accuracy is
undoubtedly a companion project

Our survey also explored what metrics respondents have access to or work with. We
did this because we wanted to know what performance measures (like profit, process
and forecast accuracy) companies considered important to supply chain BI. Slightly
less than half of the respondents said that they have access to critical metrics such
as profitability and process data. These results are somewhat contrary to the results
showing what functional areas are using supply chain BI, where we see the most use
by finance groups and executive management. We find the lack of access to process
data particularly troubling. BI is a critical tool for analyzing business process
information. Without that, it’s virtually impossible to measure, evaluate and control
business processes.

Ventana Research believes that to connect processes with performance goals,

companies need business intelligence capabilities, including metrics, key
performance indicators (KPIs), executive dashboards and advanced reporting. They
must go beyond just providing reports of basic operational metrics to facilitating
access to aggregate data definitions and real-time information. Without BI, it is
impossible to correlate process outcomes to corporate performance goals or to apply
operational metrics to continuous process improvement.

Our survey finds that nearly half of most companies’ supply chain BI technology is
spreadsheets or other desktop applications, and nearly one-third of respondents use
applications developed in-house. The problems associated with these technologies
include sourcing, organization and verification of data, all of which may be solved by
replacing them with dedicated applications from qualified vendors. This finding is
reinforced by the large group of users who said they are very well satisfied with
supply chain BI tools supplied by BI vendors.

We uncovered difficulties with data access in numerous ways, including the length of
time it takes to obtain information and a lack of integration between various systems
serving parts of the supply chain or elements in the company’s product mix. At the
same time, the research reveals a solid need for real-time data acquisition and
reporting. Barriers we found to easy, quick data access include unwieldy user
interfaces, disparate data warehouses, multiple systems within the supply chain and
overuse of spreadsheet technology for supply chain BI analysis. Ventana Research
believes that real-time supply chain information no longer need be a distant ideal but
is a realistic objective and a key tool in a company developing a lean supply chain,
which we define as a set of organizations and processes that are linked in a

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continuous flow of products and services, finances and information, and that interact
collaboratively to reduce cost and waste

This research reveals that the use of multiple, overlapping systems creates
difficulties for supply chain BI. Respondents told us that the most desirable feature of
supply chain BI systems is simplified data integration from all sources. At the same
time, they said that multiple instances of supply chain systems make data
integration difficult.

This research also finds integration with financial and forecast data to be an
important but unmet need. Nearly all respondents in this study said it is important to
integrate forecasts, plans and other time-phase data with supply chain data for BI
purposes. Additionally, 90 percent said integrating financial data and financial
metrics for their supply chain BI is important. Yet only half of the respondents (53%)
said that time-phase data is actually integrated in the supply chain BI applications
they are currently using.

This integration is a must if companies are to measure the accuracy of forecasts

properly. Proper forecasting has a major impact on the ability of a company to
satisfy its customers and simultaneously to manage its resources. Effective
forecasting helps management resolve the dilemma of providing better customer
service with fewer resources. Ventana Research recommends that companies
evaluate the data integration capabilities of dedicated BI platform vendors to correct
this pernicious problem.

Finally, our research reveals a need to automate transmission of supply chain data
from partners. More than one-third of companies reported that this data is
transmitted to them using manual methods such as fax and telephone, and another
one-third reported that it is transmitted using semi-automated methods such as
spreadsheets and Web portals. Having such a large volume of data that requires
manual entry into the supply chain BI systems runs contrary to meeting the need
respondents reported for real-time and intraday data updates.

Manual data acquisition will seriously hamper the development of an efficient lean
supply chain in which real-time understanding of customer demand triggers the
entire manufacturing process. Ventana Research recommends that companies
seeking to become more demand-driven, responsive and customer-oriented
automate their trading partner data, especially where responsiveness coincides with
the need to eliminate delays in supply performance metric calculations.

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Key Insights
Customer service and visibility of inventory are driving initiatives.
The most valuable benefits from supply chain BI reported by study respondents
involve customer satisfaction [Q26]. Top-ranked choices include improved customer
service and improved inventory visibility, which is the ability to know the location
and status of the physical components, from raw materials to finished goods, as they
move from suppliers through the stages of production to delivery to customers.

The second-ranked benefits involve improved company performance, which is almost

certainly tightly linked to customer satisfaction. Results show that companies most
often plan to supply BI to increase the accuracy of forecasting, reduce costs and
inventory levels and better understand the drivers of customer demand. All are key
performance management elements that are excellent proof points for implementing
supply chain BI.

Companies use supply chain BI to manage demand.

Consistent with the business drivers, the top use for supply chain BI is to understand
the demand picture [Q7]; 84 percent of respondents said supply chain BI currently is
or will be used to support demand planning. Customer account management ranked
second, and sales and operations planning was fourth, still selected by more than
three-fourths of respondents. Even though the second strongest intended application
of supply chain BI is to reduce inventory and costs, the data shows that companies
primarily are intent on using supply chain BI to improve forecasting and demand
management. These findings also indicate that companies want to improve their
understanding of the relationship between customer purchases and product supply
as a way to improve revenue generation.

Most companies will use supply chain BI in most functional areas.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents currently have or in the next 12 months will have a
supply chain BI initiative under way [Q6]. While most respondents said that Finance
has the strongest interest in this technology, cumulatively they asserted that nearly
every other functional area sees business value in analyzing the supply chain using
BI technology [Q9]. More than half said Finance already uses supply chain BI
technology, and more than half said the same of executive management and
procurement managers.

In terms of how many users will be served by supply chain BI technology now and in
the future, respondents said that more will use the technology in a year, and even
more will at full deployment sometime after that. More than one-fourth of
respondents reported 100 or more users currently being served in their company,
and 40 percent expected that many at full deployment.

Most organizations are not very mature in use of supply chain BI.
As part of this study, Ventana Research evaluated the maturity of supply chain BI
use. We find that two-thirds of companies operate at the two lowest levels (Tactical
or Advanced) of the four levels of maturity. These companies are at the earliest
stages of using BI to manage their supply chain processes; they deploy supply chain

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BI applications to relatively few departments outside those directly involved with

supply chain activities. Only 25 percent could be considered Strategic, the third level
of maturity, and only 9 percent could be considered Innovative. Companies at these
maturity levels use supply chain BI not only to manage their supply chain processes
but also to help manage demand-shaping activities. Supply chain BI is deployed in
Finance, Purchasing, Sales and Marketing. They use the information to improve
coordination of new product introductions, promotional events, supplier performance
and financial metrics.

The maturity of organizations does not vary significantly by company size as

measured either by number of employees or annual revenue, or whether a company
is domestic or international. Nor is there much differentiation in deployment by
industry sector.

Projects take time.

Only 16 percent of participants said their project took less than six months to
complete. The prolonged implementation of projects is driven by two important but
time-consuming tasks. Nearly one-third of respondents said that their IT
departments had spent most of their time developing a detailed understanding of
operational data sources [Q10]. A similar number reported that the most time-
consuming task for business users was defining requirements [Q11], while 21
percent said that the most time-consuming task for business users was confirming
the accuracy and consistency of data. The first of these results corresponds to the
time spent by IT in developing data sources, because many of the requirements are
dependent on what data is available and where it is located. We conclude that that
confirming the data’s accuracy is a companion project to supply chain BI.

Key Metrics can be hard to come by, not timely and sometimes incomplete.
Less than half of the respondents reported that they had access to profitability and
process data as supply chain metrics. These results are somewhat contrary to the
results showing that among functional areas using supply chain BI finance groups
and executive management are the greatest users. Additionally, one-third reported
that it is not easy to gain access to key metrics, and 39 percent of them said that is
because it either takes too much time to correlate the underlying numbers or they
don’t have dashboards or other BI software that is easy to use. One-fifth (20%) said
that the team managing the BI system gave access to key metrics a low priority.

This lack of access to process data is troubling. BI is a critical tool for analyzing
business process information. Without it, it’s virtually impossible to measure,
evaluate and control business processes. Ventana Research believes to connect
processes with performance goals, companies need business intelligence capabilities,
including metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), executive dashboards and
advanced reporting. Companies must go beyond just providing reports of basic
operational metrics to facilitating access to be able to correlate process outcomes to
corporate performance goals and apply operational metrics to assure continuous
process improvement.

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Spreadsheets and in-house applications remain in wide use.

Nearly half of respondents said that at least some of their company’s supply chain BI
technology is spreadsheets or other desktop applications, and nearly one-third use
applications developed in-house [Q12, Q13]. The problems associated with these
technologies include sourcing, organization and verification of data, all of which may
be solved by replacing them with dedicated applications from third-party vendors.
Additionally, the largest group of very dissatisfied supply chain BI analysis users is
those who employ spreadsheets to do the work. In contrast, the largest group of
very satisfied users of supply chain BI analysis tools is using products provided by
dedicated business intelligence vendors [Q17]. The former result represents an
opportunity for further BI technology adoption.

Users want dashboards

When asked to identify the most important technology features for users of supply
chain BI applications [Q28], respondents placed at the top of their list of choices
dashboards. In fact, dashboard technology was the number two first choice (next to
reporting) and the number one second choice. Dashboards are reporting tools that
consolidate, aggregate and arrange measurements or metrics (measurements
compared to a goal) on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a
glance. Dashboards contribute significantly to the benefits of supply chain BI because
they can be tailored to fit a specific organization role (such as an executive or line
worker) or generate metrics reflecting a particular point of view (operational or
financial, for example).

Access to data remains difficult.

Respondents reported numerous difficulties with data access, including the length of
time that it takes to obtain information [Q22] and a lack of integration between
systems serving various parts of the supply chain or elements in the company’s
product mix [Q42]. At the same time, respondents reported a solid need for real
time data acquisition and reporting. Our analysis of the timing needs of data for
various supply chain operations revealed that the operations that sit very close in the
process to final demand, as well as manufacturing and warehousing operations,
require real time data [Q32]. Many of those same operations were reported to
require intraday or daily updates.

Ventana Research believes that real-time supply chain information is no longer a

distant ideal but a realistic objective and a key part of to moving a company toward
a lean supply chain. Barriers this study found to easy, quick data access include
unwieldy user interfaces, disparate data warehouses, multiple systems within the
supply chain and overuse of spreadsheet technology for supply chain BI analysis.

Multiple systems create difficulties for supply chain BI.

Almost one-third of respondents said that the most desirable feature of supply chain
BI systems is simplified integration of data from all sources [Q29]. At the same time,
three-quarters of them said that multiple instances of supply chain systems make
data integration difficult [Q43]. Most respondents’ companies have not yet begun
initiatives to correct the integration problem caused by multiple system instances.
Ventana Research recommends companies evaluate the data integration capabilities
of the dedicated BI platform vendors to correct this pernicious problem.

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Integration with financial and forecast data is an important but unmet need.
Nearly all of the respondents in this study said integrating forecast, planning and
other time-phase data with supply chain data for BI purposes is important [Q33].
Additionally, almost all (90%) said it is important to integrate financial data and
metrics for their supply chain BI [Q35]. The results underline the desire of managers
to use supply chain BI to help their company deliver financial performance results as
well as to smooth operations. However, only half of the respondents said that time-
phase data is actually integrated in the supply chain BI applications they are
currently using [Q34].

This integration is a must if companies are to do proper measurements of forecast

accuracy. Forecasting has impacts the ability of a company to satisfy its customers
and to simultaneously manage its resources. Effective forecasting helps management
resolve the dilemma of providing better customer service with fewer resources.

This data integration shortfall also reinforces the need for business and IT to achieve
better alignment about what should be included in supply chain BI. Prepackaged
business intelligence software that is designed specifically to support supply chain
management is virtually nonexistent. However, most BI products can handle supply
chain-related issues, although significant configuration can be required to insure that
business users’ needs are fully met.

Companies need to automate data transmissions from partners.

More than one-third of respondents reported that supply chain partners transmit
data to them using manual methods, such as fax and phone, and another one-third
reported that it is transmitted by semi-automated methods, such as spreadsheets
and Web portals [Q39]. Having such large volumes of data that require manual entry
into the supply chain BI systems is a barrier to realizing the need that respondents
reported for real-time and intraday data [Q32].

Manual data acquisition will seriously hamper the process of developing an efficient
lean supply chain that triggers the entire manufacturing process through a real-time
understanding of customer demand. Ventana Research recommends that companies
desiring to become more demand-driven, responsive and customer-oriented
automate their trading partner data transfer processes, especially where this
coincides with the need to eliminate delays in supply performance metric
calculations.

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What To Do Next
Our research reveals that most companies are looking to use supply chain BI to gain
inventory visibility, manage demand and improve customer service. Yet there are
other benefits that many are not taking advantage of. Typically that’s because there
are some missing pieces – and they involve more than software. There are also
people, process and information management issues that companies must address to
improve their supply chains and gain competitive advantage.

Assess your maturity and take steps to improve it.

Many organizations adopt technology without understanding all the associated
requirements that will enable their people and processes to use it effectively.
Companies that our research rates as Innovative avoid this mistake. They have
moved beyond merely using supply chain BI for reporting basic data such as
inventory turns or supplier costs. Instead, Innovative companies have deployed
supply chain BI to address customer-facing issues and revenue-driving activities.
Midsize and large businesses in any industry can adopt this technology combination
to improve decision-making and provide a superior interface of supply chain or
trading partner information. Using our Maturity Model, compare the maturity of your
organization to that of your industry, and use this benchmark to determine your
strategy and steps to implement it. Determine the ability of your BI technology
providers to add supply chain BI, and look for areas where you can leverage supply
chain BI to extend the value of your investments.

Expand deployments beyond direct supply chain users.

Our research concludes that only 10 percent of companies can be considered
innovative in the way they share supply chain BI information across the organization.
Most report minimal cross-functional use. Supply chain BI at a basic level is used
solely for supply chain departmental business. This deployment is too narrow to
allow a full return on investment. We recommend that companies expand the scope
of their supply chain BI to include members of executive management and Finance,
Sales, Marketing, Engineering and Product Development.

We also recommend that you identify the strategic importance of supply chain BI.
One way is to create a cross-functional team responsible for defining the common
supply chain measures and metrics that will be used across the organization.
Executives and front-line employees, not just middle managers, should use those
metrics to measure supply chain performance.

Driving the cultural change that is necessary to support a formal, integrated use of
supply chain business intelligence requires a sponsor who has broad and deep
influence across the organization. Companies should engage the COO, general
manager or CFO as the primary sponsor of their supply chain BI initiative. Our
previous research shows that the success rate of those that involve these executives
is nearly double that of those that do not.

Measure the performance of your processes.

Our research shows that use of supply chain BI in a mature manner improves the
likelihood of customer satisfaction. We recommend that you stop looking to the

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supply chain only for improved data visibility or cost containment purposes and start
considering supply chain BI in more strategic and innovative ways. Specifically we
recommend that you expand use of supply chain BI to measure the effectiveness of
the core supply chain processes. Your company can apply supply chain BI to
transform itself into a demand-driven enterprise by making decisions about how the
supply chain processes can make the company more effective (not just more
efficient). Some ways to do that are to use supply chain BI to understand decision
trade-offs, to improve new product introductions and product innovation activities
and to better understand the drivers of customer demand and manage promotions
trade spend. Truly innovative companies understand that supply chain BI will enable
them to improve business efficiency and customer relationships. They expect that
the business result will be greater flexibility to meet demand changes.

Use supply chain BI to improve your Balanced Scorecard.

The best way to measure process effectiveness is to organize your supply chain BI
measures according to a standard performance measurement reference model.
Reference models integrate the well-known concepts of benchmarking and process
measurement. The best-known reference model for managing supply chain
performance is the Supply Chain Operations Reference model (SCOR), created by the
Supply Chain Council (http://www.supply-chain.org). This model contains standard
descriptions of management processes and characterizes management practices and
standard metrics that benchmark “best-in-class” performance.

Ventana Research asserts that an integrated, strategic approach is needed to propel

supply chain operations to greater effectiveness and to provide the basis for
consistent financial results. We recommend that all supply chain BI initiatives start
with Balanced Scorecard measurements. We also recommend that SCOR results be
displayed in the Balanced Scorecard business process perspective. By doing this,
executives will be able to evaluate supply chain BI results within the company’s
performance management framework and manage within a proven reference model
that provides linkages to strategic goals.

Integrate plans, schedules and forecast data.

Our survey finds that many users are dissatisfied with their supply chain BI
information. Most users have access to only one or two types of static metrics such
as cost or variance. Missing are the critical metrics that measure the accuracy of
demand and supply plans and financial forecasts. Ventana Research recommends
that you seek to improve your understanding of plan performance by using supply
chain BI and analytic applications. We believe you will find business benefit in having
access to forecasts and financial data integrated with supply chain data, in particular
improving sales and meeting new customer demands.

Use advanced BI technologies to improve decision-making.

Our survey finds that most companies use only the basic BI components, which
include reporting, dashboards and extraction, transformation and loading (ETL). We
recommend these but also the use of the more advanced BI technologies including
ad-hoc search, multidimensional cubes, business rules engines, workflow, business
activity monitoring and alert notifications. These capabilities support multifactor
analysis such as balancing bookings, billings, backlog or line-balancing. They also

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help automate the exchange of supply chain information with trading partners. In
some cases, event processing, guided or predictive analytics, visualization or
geospatial technologies can improve insight. Applied in the right way, these
technologies help to improve decision-making by automating the time-consuming
task of analysis.

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