Business Intelligence and Knowledge management

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Knowledge management and Business Intelligence are two established business strategies that have achieved broad recognition in recent years due to the escalating consumer demands for quality and on time delivery of their product . Innovative ways and some drastic changes in the mode of communication between the supplier and consumer , along with cost reduction have resulted in the emergence of an efficient management approach

Knowledge management and Business Intelligence Integration is principally related to the optimal course of production steps and information routing starting from the production department to

the customers . Each step of a product development routine and its procurement to the customer involves the need of an accurate data system or back up ensures the optimal results . A proper distribution strategy and usage of this accurate data at all levels will not only improve the flow of materials from the end-user outlook , but it also reduces logistics costs

DEFINITIONS OF TERMS USED

OLAP - on-line analytical processing

ODS - operational data stores

CRM - customer relationship management

ERP - enterprise resource planning

RFID - radio frequency identification

DSD - Direct Store Delivery

INTRODUCTION

J . Kyle Addison , in his book Global Information Chain Manager for DuPont PPE 's apparel operations made the following observation . An Effective combination of knowledge and business intelligence in a Supply Chain Management Engine application is straightforward , easy to use , and cost-effective . It allows us to consider multiple factors , such as work-in-process , inventory levels , plant capacities , and production plans , in such a way that we can now optimize production scheduling to meet customer demand in a better way

Many other experts (Lee Billington 1995 ) have a similar definition on the issue of Integrating Knowledge data and Business information : A system with an competent amalgamation of useful data at all levels is a network of overwhelming facilities that procure raw materials , transform them into intermediate goods and then final products , and deliver the products to customers through a well formed distribution system , thereby increasing the satisfaction quotient for the customer .

Absolutely , these professionals are true to the core , but what remains to be discussed is the value of Knowledge Information which is crucial for business intelligence and it 's Distribution within the organization in to render the management system effective in all fields

Successful trade thrives on information . Any industry that cannot boast of a strong information system will never render the desired results The intends to address the importance of an efficient information system and how it works to improve the performance of enterprises various applications , thereby giving a substantial improve in productivity and saving money by utilization of specific applications in receiving , production tracking , quality control , production , and transport operations

Most of the business groups have realized the use of accurate information and data to enhance the business performance . Business intelligence and knowledge management are the two most upcoming technologies that are available to the organization for improving the quality and quantity of the knowledge available to them

A major issue on which the success of an enterprise rests is the ability of the data that is available to them at every level . This becomes more difficult as the amount of information keeps increasing every second and it becomes almost impossible to handle it . Many enterprises have been doing a lot of research work for being able to manage the surplus of information and to pick up the right piece of information . The two technologies - Business Intelligence and Knowledge management have proved to be substantially effective in benefitting the companies

Business intelligence has helped the organizations across the globe to apply functionality , scalability , and dependability of modern database systems in to create large power houses of data and extract much needed information for business advantage . On the other hand , Knowledge management which is relatively new than business intelligence are able to help the managers to improve the Web with better and improved data mining and search options . If these two technologies are combined together then they can help to analyze data and text together

Business intelligence has worked to combine the usefulness of data warehousing and on-line analytical processing (OLAP . Data ware housing is a technique where in all the data is analyzed and presented in a useful form so that it can be better utilized for business decision making . The sources from where all the data is collected is known as operational data stores (ODS . This collected data is then extracted transformed and sent to the data mart , where data cleaning is performed in which the data variations present are resolved . Inside the data mart the data is modeled in the form of an OLAP cube which helps to analyze the data easily

Large data ware houses currently hold tens of terabytes of data , where as smaller , problem-specific datamartsaretypicallyinthe10 to 100 gigabytes range

There is a lot of information that has to be extracted out from the mass of information and data available that can provide deeper insights and better decisions . This can help to observe events and other existing problems in the system that can effect market competition and partner intelligence as well . The two technologies discussed in this can provide excellent solutions if combined together for data clustering taxonomy , classification of data , extraction of viable data , and summarization techniques

There are a cluster of fields that require the combined activates of these two technologies . Some of them are expertise location , knowledge portals , customer relationship management (CRM , and bioinformatics

MOTIVATION FOR INTEGRATION

The urge to combine business integration with knowledge management has existed since quite a long time in to simplify the data separation process on different knowledge levels and fulfill the need of data analyzing techniques . The goal is to help the managers involved at different levels of a product development and procurement , to realize the importance of an appropriate knowledge management and business information system . The evolvement of appropriate planning methods will reduce the unnecessary loads that adversely affect the performance of an organization

Given here are some common problems that are faced by the business investors and which if solved by the integration of these two technologies can help them increase their rate of investment

The present scenario has poised a lot of complex activities before the managers . With the growth of an industry , a typical set of information or data has taken up the form of a sequence of disconnected activities both within and outside of the organization . To cure these circumstances , it is essential that a business and its dealers manufacturers , patrons , and other third-party providers engage in combined tactical forecast and operational implementation with an observation to minimize the cost and capitalize on cost across the entire supply chain

The existing businesses have multiple supply chains that operate independently at all levels . For example , the marketing , distribution production planning , manufacturing , and the purchasing department work according to their respective supply chain statistics leading to conflicting issues most of the times

To gain more competitive advantage , companies have been using a number of schemes to increase their source of information and visibility into their tasks , many of them turned to enterprise resource planning or ERP customer relationship management (CRM , supply chain and other management software . Definitely , these soft wares and their respective applications can be highly effective , but their efficiency is hampered when the data they require is not timely collected and presented before them . That is why the most important concern is providing cost-efficient and effective tools for providing accurate and on time data to enterprise applications to gain advantage

Most often the managers are confronted by questions related to demands and flexibility of the system . They are in a state of confusion on How to ' and At What cost ' do they need to fulfil the demands . At this moment , when the immediate need is to fulfil the demands of the market the profit and cost factor becomes secondary issues for these managers At this moment , the occasional out-of-pocket losses due to materials sales cause more losses in the long run which cannot be foreseen by the managers . Similarly , in some more instances , it becomes useless to end up spending more money or resources in an activity which could have required lesser amount if completed within time . This can be at all times avoided if the supply chain managers can take fast decisions related to demand risks , costs structure , availability of materials expediting cost , and a number of other factors

EXAMPLES OF TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION

One of the most common IT applications within a supply chain is that of bar codes which makes data collection accurate and fast . Most of the enterprises apply the bar code shipping labels or RFID application on their finished goods that are about to leave the company premises . But with changing trends , mangers have learned that if the use of bar codes is pushed back into the production system , then it provides tremendous labor and material savings . These changes lead to less time delays and this times saved can easily be converted into financial benefits and increased productivity

Similarly , the use of Direct Store Delivery (DSD ) and other route accounting operations when combined with mobile printing applications saves a lot of time and reduces the cost by a remarkable amount and in turn increases the return on Investment

Likewise , there are a number of IT applications that can benefit an organization to develop its information system so as to meet the customer requirements . Business information , production reports warehousing data , inventory problems can be supported with the help of better managed Knowledge management and Business Intelligence solutions coupled with some of these IT solutions

For example , in the field of Product Sales - A data cube if formed can help a telemarketing company to identify the main products that can be sold easily over phone by analyzing the pats trends of the tele- callers and the sales graph . The sales data can be recorded and converted in the form of an OLAP cube and then changed into textual form which can used for decision making by the management upon which products to re-in force in the market by studying their popularity chart

Similarly , a problem with the Distribution network has been cited at many instances , causing difficulties with suppliers , production facilities , and distribution outlets . At the same time , the inefficient data distribution has been identified as a cause that leads to loss of integration of various processes and causes the inability to predict demands , forecasts , inventory and transportations needs . The use of data in the form of OLAP cubes can help to sort out the errors and analyze the losses and its causes in an effective manner

Due to these and many other factors , it has become vital that the present practices of Knowledge management and Business Intelligence be revised and studied in depth to render the process to become more effective and profitable for the organizations

CONCLUSION

Definitely the credit goes to the management solutions which have enabled the managers to take a complete 360 - degrees view at the entire business activity , other than just looking at the end results by combining Business intelligence activities with efficient knowledge management . The integration of these two technologies helps the mangers to forecast product distribution , manufacturing needs , apart from optimizing the sales circulation by evaluating the key inventory measures . Finally , managers possess the metrics they need to calculate and weigh against the billings against different product costs Moreover , the client benefits from enhanced methodical suppleness and improved performance for generating , transportation and presentation of supply chain analytics and related reports

REFERENCES

1 .R .Kimball , The Data warehouse Toolkit , John Wiley sons , Inc , New York (1996

2 . D . Sullivan , Document warehousing and Text Mining , John Wiley sons Inc , New York (2001

3 .T . Nasukawa and T . Nagano , Text Analysis and Knowledge Mining system No .4 ,967P984 (2001

4 . W . Pohs , PracticalKn0wledgeManagement ,IBMPress ,Double oak , TX (2001 .5 . W .Pohs , G .Pinder , C . Dougherty , and M . White , The Lotus Knowledge Discovery system : Tools and Experiences , MIBMsystemsJ0urnal 40 ,No .4 ,956 P966 (2001

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