Considered by most technology historians to be the original “killer app,” the electronic spreadsheet almost immediately changed the personal computer from merely a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool. In the 32 years since the first commercial spreadsheet, VisiCalc, went on sale, spreadsheets have become ubiquitous — used by organizations of all sizes across all sectors for data analysis and reporting.
Microsoft Excel has long been the reigning king of spreadsheet programs, in use on 500 million desktops around the world. The research firm Forrester estimates that up to 80 percent of enterprise organizations use Excel spreadsheets for critical reporting functions.
Is the spreadsheet still the best way to analyze and report? Not in today’s fast-moving business environment, where organizations need to slice and dice mushrooming volumes of data to gain rapid business insight.
Emtec has developed broad and deep expertise in providing Business Intelligence (BI) solutions that allow companies to mine their raw data for the kind of insight that helps them identify cost-cutting ideas, uncover new business opportunities, develop crossover sales leads, react quickly to retail demand, optimize prices and more. We’ve significantly enhanced our capabilities with the recent acquisition of Emerging Solutions and its deep expertise with Oracle’s Hyperion performance management applications.
Using a proven project methodology, Emtec can help our clients implement a BI environment in which they gain access to simple tools that allow them to utilize analytics, set alerts and get critical feedback in order to improve performance. Crucial data that once was available only to corporate analysts can be placed into the hands of business users throughout the organization, giving them direct access to information they can use to make better decisions, create more effective plans, and respond more quickly to problems and opportunities.
This is a far superior approach to the widespread use of spreadsheets, which are notoriously prone to errors. Accounting giants PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG International estimate up to 90 percent of corporate spreadsheets have material errors, costing companies up to $100,000 per error per month. That equals a $10 billion hit for corporate America each year.
While spreadsheet errors are clearly a huge financial reporting issue, what we often fail to consider is what is happening when managers use these spreadsheets to contemplate important decisions. A simple data entry or cut-and-paste mistake can contaminate an entire report, as well as every decision based upon that report. It’s clear that these errors can seriously undermine the operational integrity of many organizations.
A recent Emerging Solutions engagement with a national grocery and supply chain company dramatically illustrates the effectiveness of our approach to BI. The client has a dedicated safety department working to improve safety in their stores. For years, the client relied upon manual spreadsheet reports to monitor and analyze safety incidents and claims at hundreds of stores across the country. Each month, IT generated multiple reports from information stored in several data silos. These reports were then forwarded to the corporate safety team, which merged everything into a single source.
Besides being a lengthy and error-prone manual process, this monthly practice left the safety team with reports that lacked any real actionable intelligence. It was impossible to perform any comparative analysis from month to month. The organization suffered from spending too much time on data preparation and report building, significantly delaying the process to improve safety in their stores.
Using its proven project methodology, Emerging Solutions crafted a complete BI solution within eight weeks. The process included extensive analysis and discovery with the client’s IT team, stakeholders and power users to ensure the final solution would address all issues. Once the system was designed and built, we engaged in intensive quality-assurance sessions until the system tested to the client’s satisfaction.
The client now has the ability to drill down into data to gain immediate insight into current safety status, as well as compare month-to-month figures to see changes in overall accident frequency. It’s also possible to identify which stores, if any, need extra training, technology or tools to reduce incidents and claims.
Information is power — that has been the promise of IT for a long time. By helping clients like the distilled beverage distributor included in this edition’s feature story and this national grocery and supply chain, Emtec is delivering on that promise.
