NEED OF BUSINESS

INTELLIGENCE All Rights Reserved. ©

Pineapple Innovative

SOLUTIONS Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

This White Paper from Pineapple Innovative Solutions, A group

company of Pineapple Group, India aims at presenting an overview of
Business Intelligence (BI) solutions & their importance in day-to-day life
of a company.
Table of Contents
What is Business Intelligence? ........................................................................................ 2
Why Business Intelligence Solution? ............................................................................... 4
How to Use Business Intelligence Tools? ...................................................................... 10
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 13
About Pineapple Innovative Solutions ........................................................................... 14
Contact Us .................................................................................................................... 14

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What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence (BI) is defined as a set of technological tools that turn the corporate data into the
information which can be used to support any strategic decision or finding out where the company is
heading in terms of business & customers.
In today‟s world, the Business Intelligence refers to a set of technological tools which will -
 Capture Data
 Standardize Data
 Store the data in an efficient format
 Process the data
 Display the same in an easy to understand & coherent manner
 Allows the management to take informed decisions.
The data can be displayed through mediums like dashboards, reporting tools, analysis tools & custom
made reports. It informs the managers about the complete state of business & helps in predicting the
future hence also works as decision support system (DSS).
Business Intelligence tools give the full knowledge about one‟s strengths & weaknesses. It also helps
in finding out the strengths & weaknesses of the competitors. Lack of either one of this may result in
significant losses to the company. The business intelligence solutions help in taking the decisions with
complete confidence & accuracy.
For example, consider there is one Mr. Ashish who runs his manufacturing company. He has been into
this business for last 20 years. He is currently in a growth phase where the market around him is
growing at constant speed. Ashish also wants to make the most of the current opportunities & grow his
company 4 folds in 10 years time. He has all his data recorded in a place. He has to deal with two
peculiar cases
 He is incurring losses since many a times, he does not have orders & he has to pay for labor,
raw material, electricity, storage facilities & many such charges
 In other cases, he suddenly gets many orders at once & he has to scramble for labor, raw
material & transportation. He pays almost twice the normal charges for these last minute
arrangements
This situation is repeating itself year on year. He really does not know what is happening & how to
control it. He is afraid of making new investments since he does not how fruitful they will be & does
not have much cash to waste on useless projects. He is really frustrated & really needs help.

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What can he do now? Let‟s read further…

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Why Business Intelligence Solution?

The business intelligence tools help in running the business in an optimal way. These tools make
life much easier for the managers. The business intelligence solutions help in running the daily
activities, taking short term decisions & making sure that long term decisions really yield fruits.
Depending on the nature of the problem, the business intelligence tools can be used as Strategic BI
for long term, Tactical BI for short to midterm & Operational BI for daily activities.
The various types of BI tools & their usages are shown as below –

Strategic BI Tactical BI Operational BI

 Increase Market Share  Launch a Product  Offer Bulk Booking Discounts
 Increase Total Revenue  Launch a Campaign  Monitor Payment Schedules
Objective
 Increase Customer Base  Review the Pricing  Monitor Inventory
 Take Strategic Decisions  Increase Profitability  Monitor Sales Volumes
 Market Share Analysis  Market Analysis  Real Time Sales Analysis
 Revenue Analysis  Price Analysis  Inventory Movement Analysis
BI Needs  Customer Analysis  Competition Analysis  Transport Analysis
 Long Term Planning  Cost Analysis  Fraud Detection
 Trend Analysis  Customer Analysis
 Years  Weeks  Day
Period  Months  Months  Hours
 Week
 CEO  Top Level Management  Line Manager
Users  Board of Directors  Middle Level Management  Supervisor
 Strategic Partners  Operations Manager

A set of business intelligence tools can assist in following things –

 In analyzing the data from hourly basis to yearly basis
 Find out the hidden patterns & trends from the data
 Planning the daily activities in advance with more efficiency & cost effectiveness
 Assist in doing fraud analysis.
Business intelligence tools will help in doing the customer analysis. The analysis will lead to
interesting discoveries like –
 What the customer generally purchases
 What is his purchase frequency
 What is his total purchase in terms of dollars
 What is the time when he purchases the most

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  Has the trend in purchasing of the customer changed overtime?
 How much profit the customer is bringing into the company
 Is the business growing with the customer or reducing
 How much cost is incurred in serving every order for the customer & many such things
This information can then be used to design the marketing campaigns targeting every single customer.
The campaigns can mean offering the product bundles to the customer depending on his purchase
habits, increasing / decreasing the discounts offered to the customer, plan in advance for the predicted
customer orders and be ready in advance for the change in customer orders / product choices. It is a
golden rule of customer management which states that top 20% of your customers yield 170%
profits for you, next 60% breakeven or yield minor profits while the last 20% yield the 70% losses.
Hence it is wise to focus on the top 80% & encourage the elimination of the bottom 20%. The BI tools
will be very efficient in finding out these sets of customers.
The business intelligence tools will also help in monitoring the important parameters like –
 Worker productivity
 Inventory productivity
 Transport network productivity
The worker productivity will tell out of total 100% worker availability, how much is actually utilized.
It also shows the salaries needed to be paid to workers in various seasons. The prior information will
help in establishing long term contracts with few key workers & hire the temporary workers as &
when needed. The gains out of this whole process are very significant.
The inventory management modules can effectively monitor the inventory & its usage patterns. It is a
one shot answer for two daily situations faced by companies as mentioned below –
Situation 1

Non-expected New Orders

No Stock since activity was not planned

Loss of Cusotmers, Higher costs leading to lower profits,

Loss of reputation, Win for competitor

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Situation 2

No orders in a period

Stock, machines & workers remaining Idle

Losses due to wear & tear, salaries, wearhouse charges,

transport contracts, theft etc
The inventory management will significantly reduce these losses.
The transport network analysis will help in finding out the efficiency of the transport network. The
transport network necessarily transports the goods to customers & brings the materials into the
company. Many a times, these services are hired & not owned. The analysis can show –
 The load factors of the trucks / tempos used
 How much material each vehicle carried
 How much was the cost paid every season
 How much more could have been loaded on every vehicle
 How much time the vehicles stayed idle in the company compound
This data can better equip the management to book the vehicles in advance & gain the profits through
advance booking & reduce the total number of vehicles used along with virtually eliminating the
vehicles standing idle. These gains can boost the overall profitability of the product.
All these gains can then be used to increase the profitability & reduce the cost of the product resulting
into gaining more customers, market share & overall rapid growth of the company.
So now let‟s look at what Mr. Ashish can do with the business analysis tools.

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Mr. Ashish has two products „P1‟ & „P2‟. The total flow of costs & profits for the products for the
products are as follows –

P1 P2

Sales Price = $ 100 Sales Price = $200

Raw Materials Raw Materials

Cost = $40 Cost = $120

Labor Cost = $20 Labor Cost = $30

Transport Cost = Transport Cost =

$10 $20

Storage Cost = $10 Storage Cost = $10

Other Costs = $5 Other Costs = $10

Total Profit = $15 Total Profit = $10

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Now Mr. Ashish uses the BI tools to analyze every process & finds saving opportunities
as follows –

P1 P2

Sales Price = $ 100 Sales Price = $200

Raw Materials Raw Materials

Cost = $32 20% Savings Cost = $90 25% Savings

Labor Cost = $17 Labor Cost = $24

15% Savings 20% Savings

Transport Cost = Transport Cost =

$8 $16
20% Savings 20% Savings

Storage Cost = $8 Storage Cost = $8

20% Savings 20% Savings

Other Costs = $5 Other Costs = $10

Total Profit = $30 Total Profit = $52

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The above cost savings reflect that Mr. Ashish has achieved significant results –
 Increased profitability by 100 to 400 percent
 Decrease in raw materials cost by 20%
 Decrease in labor cost by 20%
 Decrease in transport cost by 20%
 Decrease in storage cost by 20%
Mr. Ashish decides to pass on some savings in term of reduced cost to the customers. Hence he takes
following steps –
 Reduce the price of „P1‟ by 8% to $92
 Reduces price of „P2‟ by 10% to $ 180
This price reduction makes him gain the average increase in total market share of 15% quarter on
quarter resulting in putting his company on fast track growth & achieve all his targets comfortably.

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How to Use Business Intelligence Tools?

The next worry of the businessmen is “How do I use these tools?” This has been made very easy with
the modern business intelligence tools. The modern day business tools work on click to get result
methodology. What it takes to get useful information is few clicks in an easy to use software interface
& Bingo!!! The information flow starts. Modification of few parameters & another set of reports can
flow out of the system. What all it takes to run these tools is basic computer knowledge & an easy to
use computer interface designed by a competent business intelligence company.
Let‟s look at what Mr. Ashish does to use his BI tools. He wants to view the inventory turnover &
usage reports. He opens the software interface & enters the number of months for which he needs the
data. He clicks “Generate” & within few seconds, Mr. Ashish is presented by inventory turnover
report.

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Now he wants the amount of money spent on each activity for products Silicon, Solar etc. All he does
is, opens the software interface, selects the products & clicks “Generate Cost Report”. The detailed
cost report is in front of Mr. Ashish.

Next he wants to know the total down cycle time by regions. He opens the software interface & selects
the regions. He clicks on “Generate Downtime Report”. He is again presented with a report in few
seconds.

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Last but not the least; he wants a holistic view of all his products, costs & their progress.
He clicks on “Management Dashboard” & gets to see all the products with colors
signifying the progress. Red meaning a negative progress, Green meaning excellent
progress & so on.

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Conclusion

The Business Intelligence tools will certainly help in running the business in an optimized way by
making sure that it performs following functions –
 Bring the whole organization on an unified platform
 Standardize the total set of processes
 Get rid of all extra costs which do not add to the profitability
 Focus on your core competency
 Make the decisions based on your own progress & industry trends
 Be able to predict the future
 Adhere to all the quality control processes
 Be able to find out the exact source in case of faults
 Be able to reduce the cost on constant basis
 Increase the overall profitability year on year
 Increase the total market share beating the competitors
 Build strategic relationship with the customers
 Build a strong brand name
 Increase the on time delivery & other measurable factors
 Accurate & timely decision making
 Lower time to market for the products
 Significant increase in customer satisfaction
 Reduce the total turnaround time in case of orders / requests
 Higher client base & constant addition in number of profitable clients

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About Pineapple Innovative Solutions

Pineapple Innovative Solutions, a group company of Pineapple Group has a clear vision of becoming a
strategic client partner in offering various custom solutions best suited for client needs. We have major
technical strength in the fields of Business Intelligence (BI), Knowledge Management (KM) & Custom
Application Development (CAD).

Pineapple leadership team is composed of domain experts with over 20 years of experience in fields of
Auto, Aero, Education, Supply Chain, Learning and Logistics.

Our value proposition mainly focuses on –

 Deep domain expertise
 Reliable service delivery
 Technological excellence for effective decision support
 Help realize Return On Investment on total IT investments
 Attractive pricing & lower Total Cost of Ownership
 Strategic partnership with customers
 Strong customer service brand

Contact Us

For more information, visit us at www.Pineapple.co.in.

You can also mail us at – info@pineapple.co.in
Call us at - +91-9962416488, +91-9049008986

Visit us at – www.pineapple.co.in Email: info@pineapple.co.in