MiniCase 1: Lexmark International Improves Operations with BI

4. How can the system improve customer service?
There are several ways that business intelligence can improve customer service. One of the ways is by having the right and updated information at the right time, thus allowing the customer service representative or the likes to provide timely, update and accurate services to the customers. With the use of BI system, the organization or the individual providing services to the (prospective) customers will have a clear idea as to what products are missing in the store, the inventory level of products, and others. By understanding such concepts or intricate information, the organization or representative of the organization will be able to best serve the needs of its customers.

5. Go to MicroStrategy's Web Site (microstrategy.com) and examine the capabilities of Retail IB system. Prepare a list.
In MicroStrategy's Web Site, two different business intelligence services and products are discussed: The MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform and MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Services.

Features of BI Platform
1. Unification of reporting, analysis and real-time business.
2. Simple initial implementation.
3. Low entry cost.

Features of BI Services
1. Maximization of organization's return on investment through the utilization of hundreds of professionals of Microstrategy.
2. Services provide include consulting and beta programs.

6. Go to the SAS Web Site (sas.com) and find their Retail Intelligence product (take interactive tour). Compare it with Microsoft's product. Also, compare it with Oracle Retail (oracle.com/retek).

SAS' Retail Intelligence, Microsoft Intelligence Products, and Oracle Retail
SAS Retail Intelligence:
-provides right information, at the right time and at the right format.
-fast, simple and complete system.
-provides capabilities that are appropriate in different skills within the organization.
-allows users to see relationships among data, documentations that are not easily available in manual or non-usage of BI system.
-provides services like reporting, office integration, query and analysis, OLAP, business visualization and integrated analytics.

Microsoft Business Intelligence:
- breaks down its business intelligence by personal BI, team BI and organizational BI.
-provides services like data warehousing, data integration, OLAP, reporting, analysis, predictive analytics, scorecards and dashboards, planning and budgeting, delivery, and enterprise research.
-BI services provides the needed services in different business roles, industry, and segment.
-Microsoft has four different kinds of BI products: SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, 2007 Office System, and PerformancePoint Server 2007.
www.microsoft.com/bi

Oracle Retail
- It monitors business processes or activities in real-time and alerts staff members to exceptions or the next business process.
- It enhances product cycle managmeent and improves supply-chain management.
- It increases productivity.
- Improved uniformity of business operations.
- Oracle Retail has different products. These products include not only Retail Intelligence but also Oracle Database, Oracle Retail DataWarehouse, Oracle Retail Business Intelligence Accelerator, Oracle Retain Extract, Transform and Load, Oracle Retail Integration Bus and Oracle Retail Integrator.
http://www.oracle.com/applications/retail/bi/index.html