Tempering the supply chain with better BI
The main challenge however, is that these issues are no longer specific to the IT department. Line-of-business managers in marketing, sales, manufacturing and procurement - to name a few - are now forced to drive tangible business value from this quagmire of data and generate a healthy flow of information throughout the value chain. In the face of these challenges, many CPG organisations are gravitating toward business intelligence (BI) tools to help create those supply chain linkages and deliver product more efficiently.
Aberdeen's April 2009 Benchmark Report, "Moving Past Spreadsheets: What You Need to Know About BI Deployment Strategies", demonstrated that 40% of companies in the CPG industry are driven toward BI technology in order to address their need to improve speed of access to relevant business data. This Aberdeen Sector Insight examines companies in the CPG industry to determine how these organizations are driving BI into the hands of more business managers in order to better manage fluctuating product demand.